


The Final Word

by harrietelizabeth



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, M/M, MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-12
Updated: 2016-10-12
Packaged: 2018-08-22 00:48:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 37,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8266583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harrietelizabeth/pseuds/harrietelizabeth
Summary: A story about love, loss, and letting go





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by my sister's suggestion that I write a fic based on Snow Patrol's song 'Make This Go On Forever', specifically the line 'the final word in the final sentence you ever uttered to me was love.' This story takes it's inspiration from that song, as well as many other songs, poems, and books. I've included quotes from some of them throughout, and hopefully I've done them justice!
> 
> Enjoy, and I'm sorry in advance x

_"The final word in the final sentence you ever uttered to me was love"_  
\- Snow Patrol, ‘Make This Go On Forever’

 

_February 21st 2022_

Zayn shouldn’t have let Liam drive.

Not in the state he’s in, going too fast, windscreen wipers moving at full tilt, headlights cutting through the sheets of rain that fall across the road in the dark. Not when they’ve been arguing over the same old thing they’ve been arguing about since they got together four years ago. Money, and the fact that Liam’s sister always needs more, and the fact that she always spends it on her deadbeat boyfriend who can’t get a job but can drink 100 quid worth of beer in an afternoon. 

Zayn had barely been able to get into the passenger seat before Liam was backing recklessly out of the driveway, not even bothering to check his mirror or put his seatbelt on. Zayn desperately wants to reach over and clip it for him now, put his hand over Liam’s white knuckles on the steering wheel and tell him to pull over, tell him Zayn can drive instead, but the coal-black glint in Liam’s eye makes Zayn hold back, makes him grip the edges of his seat as Liam swerves and weaves his way to Ruth’s house.

“Babe, slow down,” Zayn pleads as Liam speeds up through another amber light, the glow illuminating Liam’s set jaw and the vein standing out on his neck in sickly orange.

“Don’t tell me how to drive. Don’t tell me how to talk to my sister. Don’t fucking act like you know shit about my life,” Liam says through gritted teeth. 

He gets like this, when he gets the call from Ruth asking for more money, or to stay the night at Liam and Zayn’s because Richie drank too much again and he’s loose with his fists when he’s loaded. Zayn doesn’t interrupt Liam, doesn’t correct him to say he knows every piece of his life inside out, that he knows Liam likes his eggs cooked for two minutes in the morning, not one or three, that he’s read the seventh Harry Potter book thirteen times, that he can run six miles in 42 and a half minutes. 

But he doesn’t say any of this, just lets Liam vent his anger and watches the road as the white centre line flashes by, lit up by Liam’s headlights and the occasional oncoming car. Zayn sees the glow of the red light ahead of them, and waits for Liam to slow down. 

He doesn’t.

Zayn waits.

Liam keeps driving.

Later, Zayn thinks of the thousands of moments in which he could’ve told Liam to slow down. He should have reached over, taken Liam’s hand, told him to brake. He could’ve taken Liam’s keys before he ever got in the car. But they’ve been through this so many times, Liam storming over to Ruth’s in a fury, threatening to lay hands on Richie, who always seems to conveniently disappear into the wallpaper whenever Zayn and Liam arrive. Then Ruth will cry and say she’s sorry, and Liam will hug her for ages and ages, then he’ll leave a 50 pound note on the side table in the hallway as he and Zayn leave.

But tonight, Liam keeps driving through the red light. 

Zayn hears himself, finally, screaming “Liam!” as their tires hiss on the wet tarmac. 

Zayn registers a flash of light from their right, a blaring horn, the screech of wet rubber on the road, and then the sickening crunch of metal on glass on concrete on bone. 

Then silence.

 

//

 

When Zayn opens his eyes, he can’t hear a thing. He can’t feel his legs or his torso. 

All he can see at first is a bright light, illuminating the jagged edge of the windscreen in front of him and the glittering shards of glass in his lap. His first instinct is to turn his head to his right, remembering where the flash of light and the deafening crash of metal came from. 

It takes a second for his body to respond to his brain, and then he sees the bonnet of another car, notices it’s blue and one of its headlights is still blaring, straight into Zayn’s face. 

He sees the top of Liam’s head, his hair, sticking up from having run his hands through it so many times, fluttering slightly in the wind. Zayn notices calmly that the rain has started to blow inside the car through the broken windscreen. 

He can’t see Liam’s face, so he reaches out a hand, grabs Liam’s shoulder and pulls him to face Zayn. 

Liam’s eyes are closed, his eyelashes swept out across his cheek, and he looks almost peaceful. 

Then Zayn sees a trickle of blood running from Liam’s hairline down his temple. 

The feeling starts to return to Zayn’s legs, he can feel his heartbeat raging in his chest, panic rising in his stomach. He grips Liam’s shoulder, his fingers digging in past the muscle to the bone. 

“Liam,” Zayn says, his voice hoarse. He thinks he can hear other people yelling outside of the car, but he’s not listening. All he needs to hear is Liam’s voice. 

“Liam,” he says again. 

Liam looks like he does sometimes when he falls asleep on the couch in front of the television, his chin tucked into his neck, his mouth slack and his eyes quivering slightly as he watches his dreams play out in his mind. 

“Li, open your eyes. Open your eyes Liam,” Zayn says, feeling his heart rise in his throat as his voice becomes thinner, as he struggles to draw breath. He feels like there’s an entire car sitting on his chest, even though it’s just the seatbelt locked in place across his body. He lets go of Liam’s shoulder, brings his hand up to cup Liam’s cheek. It’s still warm. 

Liam’s eyes slide open. Zayn can feel the rain on his cheek. 

“Liam,” he chokes. 

Liam looks right at Zayn, his eyes the darkest brown Zayn’s ever seen them, like looking into a pot of freshly brewed coffee. Liam looks at him so fiercely that Zayn feels like something’s being ripped out of his chest, something he’s never going to get back. 

“I’m so sorry,” Liam says, his lips barely moving, his voice hardly more than a whisper. The blood from his forehead is trickling over Zayn’s hand. He shakes his head violently.

“Babe, it’s ok. S’not your fault. It’s gonna be ok.” 

Liam closes his eyes.

“Zayn,” he says, his voice trailing off, and Zayn uses every ounce of energy he has left to lift his left arm and grab the other side of Liam’s face.

“Li, no, stay with me. Liam – ” his voice breaks off, and he feels someone’s arms reach through the passenger doors and unclip his seatbelt. He doesn’t let go of Liam’s face. 

Liam’s eyes flutter open, hooded, and Zayn can feel the warmth from them even though the rain is pelting the side of his face and the wind is cutting through both of them like needles. 

“Love you, Z,” Liam says, and Zayn hears the words echo all around him even though they’re barely audible on Liam’s lips. “I love….”

Liam’s eyes slide closed. 

His head feels heavy in Zayn’s hands, and Zayn grips his cheeks tighter, hears himself saying Liam’s name over and over. 

He tries to fight the hands pulling him away from Liam, and he’s sure he leaves nail marks on Liam’s cheeks as he’s finally overpowered and pulled backwards out of the car, watching Liam’s head drop onto his chest, blood smeared down the left side of his face from Zayn’s hand. 

Zayn can hear someone screaming at the top of their lungs, and looks around, confused, until he realises the panicked screaming he can hear is coming from his own mouth. His throat is burning, his eyes sting, but he can’t stop screaming. 

He tries to scramble back to the car, back to Liam, to look him in the eyes one more time, to say it back, but he’s held back by strong arms wrapped around him, pulling him away, away from the car and Liam, so he screams for the whole world to hear.

Zayn’s bundled into an ambulance, lights shining in his eyes and people pressing their thumbs to the underside of his wrists, to his temples, pushing his hair off his forehead and checking under his tee shirt for bruises. Zayn feels like he’s underwater, his hearing and vision blurred by the water pressing in on him from all sides. There’s no air left in his lungs but he repeats Liam’s name until his voice goes hoarse and finally gives out, but it’s like the people around him are robots, lifeless, beeping and clicking in time with the machines that they hook Zayn up to. 

He feels like he’s drowning, like he’s taking water into his lungs instead of air and he’s choking on it, when he sees, out the back of the ambulance door, Liam being pulled from the car, his body impossibly small as he’s lifted onto a stretcher. Zayn shuts his eyes and tries to remember Liam, his Liam, the way he surrounds Zayn with his body and his arms, the way he seems so large next to Zayn even though they’re almost the same height. 

He hears the ambulance doors close and he’s jolted where he lies as it lurches away, and the sirens drown out the rest of Zayn’s thoughts. 

//

Time seems to go by in flashes for Zayn, like he’s watching himself through a slideshow of photographs. He sees himself being wheeled into the hospital even when he protests at the top of his lungs that he’s fine, when he tries to rip the IV out of his arm and is held down on the bed by a nurse. He watches himself being patched up while he asks repeatedly for Liam. He needs a few stitches over his eyebrow and a brace around his ankle, when the only pain he can feel is in his chest, like there’s a shard of glass from the windscreen lodged in there, right under his heart, digging in every time he tries to take a breath. 

“I need – to see – Liam,” he rasps at the nurse who’s been studiously ignoring him for the last half hour. 

“I’m – fucking – fine,” he says through gritted teeth as she lifts up his ankle and turns it left and right. Zayn thinks it should hurt, thinks he should be wincing in pain, but he can’t feel a thing because he’s paralysed with fear, that he hasn’t seen Liam, hasn’t heard from him, and the last thing he remembers is the word love leaving Liam’s lips. He needs to hear it again, just one more time. 

He needs to say it back.

“Ok, Mr Malik, this is all we can do for now. But you need to rest,” the nurse says. 

Zayn looks at her closely for the first time; she’s young, with large, hazel eyes and soft looking brown hair swept back in a ponytail. Her features are small, delicate – she reminds Zayn of his younger sisters a bit. She makes a note on his chart and then turns to leave, and Zayn grabs her wrist. It’s slender, and he can feel her pulse race like a caged bird against his thumb. Zayn’s eyes flit up to her nametag: Eleanor, it says.

“Eleanor, please,” Zayn gasps, his voice thin and wavering. Eleanor looks at him warily, her eyes flitting to the door, and Zayn knows she’s thinking about paging a doctor. 

“I’m sorry, I just – you have to understand. He’s everything to me, he’s the only thing I’ve got, I –“ his voice breaks, and Eleanor’s face softens. 

“Ok,” she says gently, her eyes flitting to the door. “Let’s go.” 

She unfolds a wheelchair that’s standing in a corner of the room, then helps Zayn into it. 

He’s always hated hospitals, ever since he had an uncle who died of cancer when he was younger. It’s all Zayn can think about whenever he goes to a hospital – like the time Harry and Niall had both sprained their ankles within a week of each other, and had matching moonboots – death, and the smell of it, and the look on people’s faces when they’re confronted with it. 

He barely notices when Eleanor stops to talk to doctors, who consult charts or type furiously onto a pager before pointing her further down the corridor. She seems to have a knack for getting what she wants, and soon she’s leaning down to tell Zayn that they’re almost there. She wheels him up to a room with the door slightly ajar, and Zayn doesn’t know what hits him but he can feel Liam behind that door, feel that he needs Zayn, and in an instant he’s out of the chair, pushing open the door, ignoring the searing pain in his ankle and in his head and his chest and seeing two doctors standing over the bed, a stiff white sheet pulled up over Liam’s feet and legs and torso. 

Zayn can’t see his face behind the doctor’s white coats but he knows there’s something wrong immediately when one of them whirls around to face him, and he hears it. 

He hears the silence, ringing in his ears louder than the sirens of the ambulance. 

There’s no beeping machines, no noises of pain coming from the bed or calming reassurances from a nurse. There’s no noise in the room at all. 

The doctor walks over to Zayn, taking his arm and steering him towards the door. 

“You shouldn’t be in here,” he says as Zayn digs his heels in. 

“I’m his boyfriend,” Zayn says, his voice sounding high-pitched and panicked in his own ears. “I just need to –“

“Family only,” the doctor says. Zayn’s pushed out of the room, but not before his eyes catch on the clipboard the doctor is holding in his other arm, with three small letters scribbled on a piece of paper, messily, carelessly – 

_D.O.A._

Those letters thud into Zayn’s skull like knives, and he goes limp against Eleanor who’s standing in the corridor.

“Please,” he hears himself sob, “Please, I’m his b –“ Zayn gasps, “I’m his boyfriend.” 

The word seems utterly inadequate to describe what he and Liam are – early morning kisses with terrible breath, and orange juice at breakfast and holding hands on the tube and days of silent fighting ending in hands fisted in sheets, and every awful love song ever written.

And now he can’t even see Liam, can’t even tell him what he needs to hear because he’s – 

Zayn’s mind is filled with those three letters, _D.O.A_ , until he can’t breathe and he’s probably left bruises on Eleanor’s arm.

“Zayn?” he hears from down the corridor. 

It’s a woman’s voice, and Zayn can’t turn to look at her because he knows that it’s Ruth standing there, and she’s a spitting image of Liam. His chestnut curls when he lets them grow out and wide brown eyes like endless cups of warm coffee that Zayn gets lost in every time he looks too close. 

And now she’s here and Liam’s not, and Zayn can’t look at her, he can’t breathe without Liam by his side.

“Are you the sister?” the doctor who had forced Zayn out of the room asks, as Zayn clings to Eleanor for dear life.

“Yes,” Ruth says, her voice breaking, and still Zayn can’t look at her because it was Ruth they were on their way to see, Ruth they were arguing about, Ruth that Liam was so worried about that he drove too fast through the rain without a seatbelt and didn’t brake for a red light and now – 

_D.O.A_ , Zayn thinks blindly. 

Dead on arrival.

“We need you to – identify him,” the doctor says, and Ruth lets out a sound that wrenches Zayn’s spine, puts his heart in a vice and he’s sure he’s stopped breathing. 

“No, I – I can’t, Zayn, I can’t, no,” she’s crying and then Zayn looks up at her, finally, her curls wild from the rain and looking every inch like her brother with those soft lips twisted in pain and her dark, dark brown eyes glistening with tears, and Zayn – 

Zayn hates her, because this is all her fault.

If she wasn’t stupid enough to stay with her deadbeat boyfriend and leave it up to her brother to save her every time she needed it, Liam wouldn’t be lying on that hospital bed in that room that Zayn can’t seem to leave in his mind. He’d be curled up on the couch next to Zayn in his socks, throwing sour snakes at the TV when his favourite Great British Bake Off contestant was eliminated, while the rain streaked the windows of their flat.

Zayn feels like he’s swallowed acid as he looks at Ruth and thinks about Liam lying under a stiff white sheet, and his body moves before he can process it. He lets go of Eleanor and lunges towards Ruth, grabbing her arms and shaking her. 

“We were driving to see _you_ , Ruth. We were arguing about you, like we always fucking are and now look!” Zayn screams. 

He can hear Eleanor calling for security behind him, can see the blind terror in Ruth’s eyes that are so like Liam’s but he doesn’t care, because Liam’s gone. Liam is gone, and he realises he’s yelling this at Ruth over and over again, he’s fucking gone, until he’s pulled off her by a pair of strong arms and taken away to another white room with stiff sheets and a needle, and then his breathing slows and his mind goes fuzzy like an off-frequency radio, and then there’s nothing.

//

When Zayn comes to, Harry and Louis are sitting to his left, their fingers tightly intertwined and their lips twisted with worry. Harry’s eyes are ringed with angry red and there are tear tracks down his face, while Louis looks pallid and grey under a beanie, like a ghost, Zayn thinks, then he’s hit with the realisation of why they’re here, and he feels like he’s going to throw up. He scrambles for anything next to the bed, a bowl or a tray, and ends up being sick all over Harry’s shoes. Harry doesn’t even get mad, just crumples and leans over the bed to pull Zayn into a hug. 

“Fuck, Zayn,” he says, his voice trembling and wet. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

Zayn’s numb, clinging on to the back of Harry’s tee shirt, inhaling lungfuls of his smell, like vanilla and melted caramel. 

“We both are,” Louis says in a voice that’s too small for him, climbing onto the bed and curling into Zayn’s other side. 

“I need to see him,” Zayn says, thinking of Liam’s face masked by the doctors’ white coats. “They wouldn’t let me see him but I have to, they –“

“I know, babe,” Harry says, rubbing Zayn’s back as he pulls away. “I’ll – I’ll go find someone.”

Zayn aches with how young Harry looks, striding towards the door with his face wet and his hair a mess under his restless fingers. Zayn clings tighter to Louis, smells the scent of a dozen cigarettes under his usual aftershave. 

“This is so fucked,” Louis says, his voice cracked and hoarse. 

Zayn doesn’t say anything, just thinks of headlights and wet concrete and a million little shards of glass. 

He wishes it had been him.

//

 

 _"Perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone."_  
Madeline Miller, ‘The Song of Achilles’

 

Niall shows up at the hospital a little after Louis and Harry do, his eyes ringed with red and his shock of blonde hair a mess with the way he keeps pulling at it every two minutes and repeating “I can’t fucking believe it” until Zayn snaps at him to shut up. He never snaps at Niall, never has any reason to, but he can’t stand to hear him say he can’t believe it over and over again as if the others are finding it so easy to accept that Liam is just gone, he went into that room and he’s not coming out. 

As if Zayn wants to believe that this is his life now, signing release papers and collecting prescriptions for painkillers and being given a check-up appointment in two weeks for his ankle. 

They have to wait hours before they’re allowed to leave the hospital, before Zayn is declared ‘stable’ enough to go home. He wants to tell them he’ll never be fucking stable again, he’ll always be one word away from collapse because Liam was always his rock, always his constant when things got difficult, always talking sense into Zayn when his mind was spiralling out of control.

Zayn goes home with Louis while Harry drives with Niall, because he doesn’t want him to be alone. Zayn stares at the wet streets and wonders with a sick feeling if Liam’s car is still there, if the glass is still all over the road, if any of their blood is still smeared on the concrete. He closes his eyes and leans his forehead against the cool glass of the car window, feeling faint.

“It should’ve been me,” Zayn says, without opening his eyes. It’s all he can think about, the only thought ringing loud enough in his brain to drown out thoughts of _Liam, Liam, Liam_. 

“Zayn, don’t, you –“ Louis’s voice is pained, wracked with tears, but firm. “You can’t think like that.”

“I don’t care,” Zayn says, wanting to wrench the wheel and drive the car off the road so he doesn’t have to feel this dull pain in his chest any longer. If Louis wasn’t driving, Zayn wouldn’t even hesitate. 

“Zayn,” Louis says again, his voice gentler. Zayn looks up at him, but the pained expression on his friend’s face doesn’t shift the weight in his chest.

“I mean it, Lou. I have absolutely no interest in life without him,” he says, and turns his forehead back to the window. He closes his eyes for the rest of the drive home. 

It should have been him.

//

Zayn is assaulted by reminders of Liam as soon as they get back to their apartment. The dogs jump all over him, Rhino especially, while Loki gives Zayn a greeting bark and then cranes his neck for Liam. It breaks something inside of Zayn, the dog’s wide, expectant eyes which look to Zayn for answers. 

Louis walks in behind him, telling Zayn he’ll put the jug on, but Zayn just sinks to his knees and buries his face in Loki’s fur. He thinks of Liam’s face when he’d first seen Loki two years ago at the shelter he always dragged Zayn to, always looking but never adopting until he’d found the husky who put his paws up on the cage when Liam walked past. Zayn digs his fingers into the dog’s fur, clinging on for dear life as he feels sobs rack through his body. He doesn’t even want to look at Loki, remembering the way Liam would play with him when he was a puppy, the way he’d fall asleep on the couch with Loki on his chest, his hands buried in his fur like Zayn’s are now. 

Zayn feels a hand on his shoulder, but he clings to Loki like a lifeboat until the dog whimpers, and Louis gently says “Zayn.” He lets go, but stays on the ground, curling into himself until he feels Louis kneel down beside him and wrap his arms around him. Zayn leans into his friend and cries, feels like he won’t ever stop, like the pain is too big to be contained in his body. He cries until he can’t breathe and then he keeps crying until his throat is raw and his chest is heaving. He cries until Harry and Niall get there, and then they lift him onto the couch and stay wrapped around each other in a huddle, silently missing the empty space where Liam should be.

//

_February 22nd 2022_

The next few days all blur into each other for Zayn. Niall takes him to stay at his place for a while, which Zayn silently appreciates, because he’s haunted everywhere he looks by the traces of Liam that cover their apartment - his clothes, his watch, the lesson plans he’d been writing for next week. Lessons he’d never teach, a week he’d never see. 

Zayn wants to burn it all to the ground. 

Niall cooks for him and goes round to feed the dogs and walks them, every bit the functioning human that Zayn can’t bring himself to be. But sometimes, late at night when Zayn’s lying awake, replaying the crash over and over again in his head, he hears Niall crying softly next to him. Zayn sometimes wants to let him know that he’s awake, wants to talk about it with Niall until their voices are hoarse and they’re so exhausted they finally fall asleep, but Zayn feels irrationally selfish with his grief, telling himself Niall has no reason to cry because he wasn’t in love with Liam. 

He wasn’t the one who woke up to Liam’s kisses every morning and fell asleep to him snoring, or who had to open the same birthday card every year – _Dear Zayn, Happy Birthday, I love you, from your Liam_. So he rolls away from Niall and listens to his quiet sobs until his friend falls asleep. Then, only then, Zayn lets himself cry.

//

_February 26th 2022_

Zayn almost doesn’t show up to the funeral. It takes a joint effort of Harry, Niall, Louis and finally Zayn’s mum to get him out of Niall’s bed, and with one look at his mum’s tear-streaked face, Zayn’s crying again, protesting that he can’t go, he won’t go. He doesn’t think he can bear to hear other people talk about Liam, people who didn’t know him like Zayn did, didn’t love him like Zayn did. 

But Harry hands him a suit, and Louis gently combs through his hair with his fingers, and his mum gives him a kiss on his forehead just like she used to when he was a little boy. Niall’s jaw is set, like he’s refusing to cry, and Zayn can’t look at him because he knows that if he does, he’ll lose it. 

The drive to the funeral home is silent, Louis’s knuckles white on the steering wheel and Harry’s hand on his thigh making Zayn feel sick in the backseat, in between Niall and his mum. 

“I don’t think I can do this,” Zayn says as they pull up and see the hearse, because fuck, that’s Liam in there. Liam, who used to lie next to Zayn in bed, Liam who used to run his fingers through Zayn’s hair and race him to the tube station when they were running late for work. His mum laces her fingers through his and squeezes gently. 

“I’m right here, love.”

Harry turns around from the front seat, his eyes swimming. “We all are,” he says, his voice quivering, and Zayn squeezes his eyes shut because it doesn’t matter that they’re here, it doesn’t matter that any of them are here, because Liam isn’t.

There are fewer people at the funeral than Zayn had expected, and it makes him want to smash the vases of flowers that line the aisle of the room, because Liam should have hundreds of people mourning for him. Looking around, Zayn can’t believe these are the only lives Liam touched enough for them to be here, because he always felt like Liam was the centre of the universe, drawing people to him like a magnet, like a bright, bright light that no one could resist. 

But it’s just his family (who Zayn avoids, still unable to think about Ruth without digging his nails into his palms until they bleed), some of the guys Liam played football with on Thursday nights and most of the staff from school. They all drift up to Zayn when they spot him, offering their condolences and saying something like “he was so good with the kids, he’ll really be missed,” as if Zayn doesn’t know that, didn’t use his free period after lunch every Tuesday to watch Liam with his third form class, coaching them through basketball and high jump and cross country and swimming. 

He doesn’t remember much of the service, too numb to cry or do anything but cling to his mum’s arm as they play a song that Liam probably didn’t even like that much, and give speeches about how smart Liam was in school and how much he loved his job. He stares blankly at the black coffin at the front of the room, covered with tastefully arranged flowers that he imagines he can smell from his seat in the third row, that makes his throat feel thick and cloyed with pollen even though they’re probably plastic. The lid Is closed, but Zayn can still remember his deep brown eyes staring back at Zayn while the sirens screamed around him and Liam said his final words. Words Zayn couldn’t even repeat back to him before he was wrenched away from Liam, torn from the only person he’d ever belonged to. 

Zayn clenches his fists throughout the entirety of Liam’s sisters’ speech, which they choke out through tears and wet laughs as they recall their brother’s mishaps in his youth. Ruth doesn’t mention that Liam was driving to see her the night of the crash, and Zayn wants to stand up and scream it to the entire service, wants to point at her and say _it was you, you did this to him,/i >, but Niall puts a firm hand on Zayn’s shoulder when he senses him getting restless, and Zayn settles for biting the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood. _

_Zayn had been asked to make a speech, but he’s never been good with words and he doesn’t think there’s anything he could say that could sum up the way he feels about Liam, the hole that’s gaping in his chest now that Liam’s gone. The pain that feels so big it threatens to tear through his skin. The memories that well up in his mind now, unprovoked, too fast and too many for Zayn to stop them. Liam in the kitchen in the morning, drinking coffee. His hands on the back of Zayn’s thighs. His legs and arms, cutting through the air as he ran on the track at school. His smile, the first thing Zayn saw when he woke up and the last thing he saw before he fell asleep at night._

_Louis offered to make a speech in Zayn’s place, since he and Liam had been friends since they were teenagers. Zayn watches him stand up now and thinks about how impossibly small Louis looks onstage, in his suit and tie and his hair pushed back off his forehead. Louis clears his throat wetly._

_“Um, hi. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Louis Tomlinson. I met Liam when we were thirteen, in the same class on our first day of high school. We – I actually hated him when we first met, and I’m pretty sure he hated me too –“ Zayn hears a murmur of laughter go around the room – “but once we realised we had more in common than we thought, we got along like a house on fire. And no, that house fire down the street from me wasn’t actually us, despite speculation.”_

_Louis’s speech sounds like he meant it to be humorous, but he’s staring down at his typed sheet of paper with a helpless, slightly lost expression._

_“Since you all – since we all knew Liam, I don’t need to say this, but he was one of the best blokes I ever –“ his voice cracks, and Zayn feels himself start to come apart at the seams – “I ever met. He was always up for anything, after he got past his no-breaking-rules-rule.”_

_Another ripple of laughter, as Zayn struggles to stop the sob that’s building up in his chest. He remembers Liam making love to him in a locked classroom at school after hours, Zayn protesting they’d be caught and Liam telling him not to be such a priss. He was always a stickler for rules, except for when he wasn’t._

_And fuck, he shouldn’t be thinking about sex with Liam at his funeral, his fucking, fucking funeral, but that was part of the deal with Liam – Zayn always wanted him, when he was teaching and when he’d just woken up and when he was almost asleep and Liam rolled over and pressed himself against Zayn’s back. It wasn’t something he could control, or resist, just like the hammering in his chest and the swoop in his stomach that never stopped when he was around Liam, even after four years._

_“His mates were the most important thing in the world to him,” Louis is saying, “as well as his family, and I can’t – Karen and Geoff and Nicola and, and Ruth, I can’t even imagine what you’re going through, and I’m truly sorry. Liam would do anything for the people he cared about, as we – as we all know, he put others first. He loved his kids at school, which was pretty obvious to anyone who worked with him, I don’t think there’s a teacher at that school who was more loved than Liam – myself included.”_

_Zayn finds himself nodding in agreement – Liam was always voted teacher of the year by the students. Even the ones who didn’t take P.E. knew him from his smile in the corridors, the way he didn’t care about embarrassing himself at school shows when Louis, head of drama, would convince him to appear onstage in a dress, or a Spiderman suit, or a toga that showed off half his chest._

_“Anyway,” Louis says thickly, “I just wanted to say that Liam’s left a huge hole, huge, and he’ll really, really be missed.”_

_There’s a long pause, and Zayn feels his eyes filling as Louis struggles to keep himself together._

_“We love you Li, see you in another life. Save me a seat, or whatever.”_

_Louis bows his head, and Zayn sees his shoulders shaking. He feels tears wetting his own cheeks as Louis walks off the stage._

_There’s another song, something about saying goodbye to a friend and finding each other in the summer stars, that Zayn lets himself cry through, his head buried in Niall’s shoulder, and then he’s being called up to help carry the coffin._

_He stands behind Geoff and catches Louis’s eye as he walks past Zayn to stand behind him, his stomach turning at the depth of sorrow he sees in his friend’s eyes. On the other side of the coffin – which Zayn still can’t reconcile as the coffin which holds Liam’s body – Harry, Niall and Liam’s childhood friend Andy take their places, and then all of them kneel and lift the coffin onto their shoulders. Zayn sways momentarily – it’s heavier than he’d expected, and he thinks that’s probably metaphorical or something, but he doesn’t get a chance to think about it as Geoff and Andy start forward, and Zayn has to follow them. He stares at his feet, concentrates on putting one foot in front of the other, and not falling down under the weight on his shoulder and the pain that thuds in his chest like a dull ache, threatening to overpower him._

_They carry Liam out of the funeral home and Zayn feels spots of rain fall on his face, though it’s already wet from tears. He watches numbly as Geoff and Andy slide the coffin into the back of the hearse and close the doors, seeing Harry and Louis hug each other out of the corner of his eye. Niall puts a hand on his shoulder, and it feels featherlight after the weight of Liam’s body ( _Liam’s body, Liam’s body_ ) on his shoulders. _

_“Time to go, Zayn,” Niall says hoarsely, his fingers digging into Zayn’s shoulder. Zayn leans into Niall’s hand for a moment, wanting to go home and climb into bed and forget, forget everything about this day and forget everything he knows about Liam, and then he remembers – it’s not over yet._

_They still have to bury him._

_//_

__"No matter what the grief, its weight,_  
we are obliged to carry it."_  
Dorianne Laux, ‘What We Carry’ 

_Zayn can barely stand up by the time he gets back to Harry and Louis’s house that night. He feels like grief has physically worn him out, like all the condolences and tears and thoughtful words have taken piece after piece of his willpower and energy until he’s got nothing left. He collapses on Harry and Louis’s couch next to Niall, letting his head flop onto Niall’s shoulder, while Harry and Louis sit on the other side of Zayn, all of them cuddling in together._

_“You did it, Zee,” Harry says softly, and Zayn shakes his head. He knows that even though the ceremony is over, even though he saw Liam lowered into the ground and shovelled dirt onto the coffin, watched it fall onto the flowers which, he saw closer up, were real, this is only the beginning._

_“No, Haz. It isn’t over. It’ll never be over. It’s just day after day of life without him now.”_

_Day after day after day of living with the knowledge that living without Liam isn’t really living at all._

_“It’ll get easier,” Niall says quietly, but Zayn shakes his head again. He doesn’t care what people tell him, about time healing everything and coming to terms with loss. There’s a hole knocked right through the middle of Zayn’s chest, the hole that he lived with until he met Liam, the hole that could only be filled by Liam’s warm laugh and his voice echoing through their apartment in the morning and the way he smelt after a shower._

_“Remember our teacher’s retreat in Liam’s first year?” Louis says quietly, after a long silence._

_Zayn doesn’t, _doesn’t_ want to talk about it. He can’t sit here and smile and laugh about the good times because it hurts so much he thinks he’ll pass out. But then Harry’s lifting his head off Zayn’s shoulder and nodding._

_“You told me about that. Liam clocked every challenge in about five minutes, and people complained because they said it wasn’t supposed to be a competition, it was meant to be about teamwork.”_

_Zayn remembers. It was Louis and Zayn’s third teacher’s retreat, the one they had before the start of every school year. But it was Liam’s first as the new PE teacher on the staff._

_But more than that, it was the week Zayn fell in love with Liam. Zayn fell in love watching him battle through obstacle courses, and helping other teachers climb over walls and conquer their fear of heights, always talking to the older ones in a soft, encouraging voice about how they could do it and how he was proud of them._

_Zayn realises he’s crying again._

_“Yeah,” Louis says, laughing wetly, “I was the one making the complaints. When Marjorie –“_

_“Hilary,” Zayn says on autopilot, remembering the nearly-retired teacher who had almost fainted on the third day, when they had to walk across high ropes in the tree-tops._

_Louis and Harry look at him carefully, and Zayn quickly scrubs a hand across his face to dry the tears._

_“Her name was Hilary, not Marjorie,” he explains._

_“Maybe you should tell the story,” Harry says gently, and Zayn shakes his head, drawing further into himself with his arms folded across his chest._

_“Why? Louis was there, he can tell it.”_

_“Clearly I don’t remember much if I got the bird’s name wrong,” Louis says, and Zayn can tell they’re just trying to be nice, trying to get him to work through his feelings, but he doesn’t want them to be nice, and he certainly doesn’t want to ‘work through his feelings’, whatever the hell that means. He wants to sleep, and forget about the way Liam’s eyes looked reflecting the red and blue of the ambulance lights and the feel of those words through the dark as they hit the side of Zayn’s face – “I love you.”_

_But Zayn can’t forget, he can’t ever forget, so he sighs, and lifts his head off Niall’s shoulder. Harry nuzzles further into Louis’s suit jacket like he’s settling down for a good story._

_“We’d all climbed up these trees to this platform, and then we had to take it in turns walking, or crawling, across this rope to another platform. Li – Liam went first,” Zayn says, no longer caring about how much he’s crying, just trying to recreate the image of Liam amongst the leaves, a harness tight round his waist, looking strong and competent and perfect._

_“And every time someone would go across, he’d be yelling support at them, all TED talk like, and he’d help them onto the platform at the other end. And he hugged every one of them and told them he was proud of them. Even me.”_

_Zayn remembers holding onto those words so fiercely for the next few days he couldn’t think about anything else. He whispered them to himself at night before he fell asleep, thinking about how warm Liam’s voice had sounded when he said “Proud of you, Zayn.” He feels his breath catch around a sob, and swallows it down, keeping the words deep in his chest._

_“Hilary refused to go, said she couldn’t do it and she was going to faint, but Liam –“ Zayn chokes, “he coached her through every step, when everyone else just wanted to get down and get out of there. It took her about twenty minutes but she got there, and then Liam hugged her and – and I realised I loved him.” Zayn says, his voice breaking at the end of the sentence._

_“That sounds like our Li,” Niall says quietly. Zayn buries his face in his hands, falling so far into the memory of that day at the teacher’s retreat that he can smell the pine needles, see the sweat beading on Liam’s forehead._

_“Remember when you did Hairspray for the school musical, and Liam almost agreed to be Edna,” Harry says to Louis, and Zayn lifts his head. There’s a small smile pulling at Harry’s lips, even though his cheeks are streaked with tears. Louis nods, his hand finding Harry’s in his lap._

_“He would’ve been brilliant. It was the fat suit that got him, I think,” Louis says, his voice fond._

_Zayn remembers that, too – Liam had argued that it just wouldn’t be right for a sports teacher to dress up as a fat woman, and he’d ended up with a part in the chorus. Zayn had never been more in love with him than when he’d watched Liam dancing and singing to his arrangement of “Come So Far (Got So Far to Go)”._

_“By far his shining moment was as Zeus,” Louis says._

_“The night his toga slipped down to his waist,” Harry says with a soft laugh._

_“Think he made every girl’s year that night,” Niall says._

_Zayn finds himself smiling and saying “Half the boys too.”_

_“I think there were probably some very confused students going back home with a whole new outlook on life after that,” Louis says, and the others laugh._

_Zayn feels guilty for laughing suddenly – he should be crying and grieving for Liam, not making snide jokes about Liam giving high school students a sexuality crisis. But then he thinks about Liam and how much he loved to laugh, the way his smile could light up ten rooms and how his whole body echoed with laughter._

_Zayn lets himself smile, and he lets himself remember Liam as he was – full of life and always laughing, sending a cheeky wink across the room at Zayn when he noticed him staring. Liam as he was when he was Zayn’s._

_//_

__"Memory is what is left when something happens_  
and does not completely unhappen."_  
Edward de Bono 

_Zayn knows that there are five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance – but he doesn’t experience them in anything like ‘stages’._

_For Zayn, the grieving process feels more like waking up in denial, expecting to roll over and feel Liam next to him, to see his face scrunched into the pillow, breathing, just breathing. When Zayn rolls over to an empty mattress, he tells himself it’s because Liam went out for a run, or had to go into work early to catch up on marking. But when he gets up and walks around their – his – apartment, the anger crashes over him, because all of Liam’s things are still there, mocking Zayn. His books and his mug and his clothes (except the one hoodie that Zayn hid from Louis and Harry that he pulls on before he cries himself to sleep – the depression stage) are all still there, but Liam himself is gone._

_Then Zayn gets to the bargaining stage. He tells himself that if he cleans up like Liam was always asking him to, if he forces himself to cook dinner even when the sight of food makes his stomach turn, that Liam will reappear in his – their – apartment, wrapping his arms around Zayn from behind and telling him that his cooking smells great. He tells himself that if he doesn’t spend half an hour sobbing in the bathroom at school, if he doesn’t walk out of the school grounds via Liam’s classroom out of sheer habit – that Liam will come back._

_But Zayn knows that he’s not coming back._

_It’s acceptance, sort of, only Zayn doesn’t think he’ll ever accept the fact that Liam’s gone, not really. Not when he lives with his ghost every single day, sits across from it at the breakfast table, watches TV next to it on the couch, falls asleep with Liam’s ghost on the other side of the bed. Wakes up shivering and sweating in the middle of the night, the sound of shattered glass and wet tires screaming in his ears, and when he turns to find comfort in Liam’s arms and finds only empty sheets, he curls up around himself and cries himself back to sleep._

_His memory seems to be working against him as well, assaulting him with vivid pictures of his and Liam’s life together at any time of the day, without warning. There are things Zayn didn’t even know he’d remembered, things he’d never thought about when Liam was here, which only resurface now he’s gone. Memories are strange like that, Zayn thinks. They’re not stored in a vault somewhere in the back of your mind, neatly filed away and ready for you to take them out when you’re ready, or to shut them away when you’re not. They can be provoked by the most insignificant things – someone’s perfume, a certain ad on TV, or a song._

_Like the way Zayn remembers the crash. No matter how many times Zayn’s played it over in his head since that night, he still can’t remember the actual impact. He remembers the red light, screaming Liam’s name, and then waking up to sirens and rain on his cheek. But he remembers vividly the song that was playing on the radio when it happened. He hears it one night at Niall’s place, the radio playing softly while Niall cooks them dinner. Zayn immediately barks at him to turn it off, and Niall looks confused but does as Zayn asks. It’s just a stupid pop song, but now Zayn can’t listen to it without breaking down in tears, his memories overpowering him._

_He tries to forget the way Liam’s skin felt against his in the middle of the night, or the smell of coffee in the morning that Liam would bring in to wake Zayn up. But he carries the memories around with him like lead weights, the way a shell carries round the sounds of the ocean long after it’s washed ashore. Zayn’s waging a war against Liam’s memory and losing, badly. Finally, he gives up and lets the memories wash over him, drowning him in a way that all the oceans in the world couldn’t do._

_He remembers the summer afternoons he and Liam would walk to the park down the block to dip their feet in the kid’s play pool, getting disapproving glances from parents who glanced over their tattoos and interlaced fingers. The way Zayn would always wrestle Liam out of his shirt and splash him, then Liam would drag Zayn in and get his jeans all wet, and they would both walk home barefoot, breathless and dizzy from too much sun._

_He remembers weekends driving out of the city, thermoses filled with tea and the radio turned all the way up, both of them harmonising to their favourite songs. Zayn would take the high notes and Liam the low, both of them laughing when they sang out of key. The way Zayn remembers it, they were always laughing, in cafes and in the staffroom and school and in between the sheets. He remembers staying up all night just to talk to Liam, just to hear the way his voice slowly got more and more hoarse as he wore it out with words, then to groan when the sun filtered through the curtains in their bedroom and to shut it out by pulling the sheets over their heads._

_He remembers Liam ducking into Zayn’s classroom on his free period, and watching Liam run drills with the track team after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He remembers the way Liam’s shirt stuck to his back after an hour of running around, yelling and blowing a whistle and showing the kids how to stretch and avoid injury._

_He remembers coming home in the middle of a conversation with Liam, trying to talk over the barking of the dogs and arguing over whose turn it was to make dinner – Zayn usually won, he’s a terrible cook. He misses the routine he and Liam had slipped into, the worn out groove they’d made in each other’s lives over the years, how Liam would scold Zayn for not taking his shoes off at the door and Zayn would remind Liam that he let Loki sleep on their bed. He misses being able to share his day with someone, the difficult students and the run-ins with Heads of Department, all the frustrations and all the tiny victories. He misses Liam like a fish on land misses water – painful, violent and desperate, filling Zayn up until he feels like he might burst._

_//_

__March 20th 2022_ _

_It’s Niall who suggests it. A month after the accident – Zayn still doesn’t know how to refer to it in his mind, the accident, the crash, the night his world stopped turning – they all go to the intersection where it happened, to lay flowers, and then to Liam’s grave._

_Zayn doesn’t want to, because he doesn’t think it will do any good. In fact, he thinks it will make things worse, for him especially, if he has to see that stretch of road, which he’s been avoiding for the last month, taking detours and long-ways just so he doesn’t have to go through that part of town. But, just as they had for Liam’s funeral, his friends don’t give him a choice. They’re at his flat in the morning, opening curtains (Niall) and making tea (Louis) and coaxing him gently out of bed and into the shower (Harry). Zayn doesn’t have the energy to argue, so he lets them herd him downstairs to Niall’s car, and drive to the exact part of the city that Zayn’s been avoiding for the last four weeks._

_He tries to make sense of the passage of time since Liam’s death, to make the weeks add up to four, the days add up to thirty, but he can’t reconcile it with the vast stretch of grief that he’s been suspended in since that night. He used to mark anniversaries with Liam all the time – the day they’d met four and a half years ago; the day Liam had finally asked Zayn out to dinner, outside of school hours, on an April morning four years ago; the day they’d moved in together, a year and a half after meeting. Birthdays, Valentines, Christmases, they all marked the year passing in ways that always involved Liam. And now that he’s gone, Zayn can’t keep up, or rather, time can’t keep up with the speed that he’s hurtling towards disaster, it feels like, with every passing minute._

_Niall pulls in to a florist on the way to the crash site, and Zayn wants to stay in the car, but Louis walks round to his door and opens it. Zayn knows if he doesn’t stand up, Louis will reach over him to unclip his seatbelt and haul him out anyway. So he follows them inside, the cloying smell of flowers and damp heat and pollen filling his nostrils. Niall goes straight for lilies, while Louis and Harry drift towards the peonies._

_But Zayn knows Liam always liked daffodils best, and it makes sense, really – the flowers golden yellow like sunshine, paling in comparison to Liam and his smile that lit up their bedroom even in the middle of the night, when Liam would move towards Zayn with a soft smile, his breath warm on Zayn’s neck._

_Zayn picks up two bunches, trying not to crush the stems even though he wants to squeeze them until they bruise, the sharp pang of missing Liam ripping through his chest. He pays the girl at the counter and waits while Niall buys one bunch of white lilies and one bunch of purple irises, and Louis and Harry fill their arms with peonies._

_It’s begun to drizzle by the time they reach the crash site, unreasonably cold for March, and Zayn thinks it’s so fitting that it’s almost cliché, the four of them standing there in the freezing wet mist, taking turns to lay down a bunch of flowers on the side of the road marked with a cross, which Zayn assumes Liam’s parents placed there._

_He thought he’d feel more, being here in the place where Liam said his last word to Zayn – _love_ – but it feels different in the grey light of day to what it had that night. There’s no broken glass scattered across the road, no tire marks marring the concrete, no flashing red and blue lights from the ambulance. Only the wet rain hitting the side of Zayn’s face that reminds him of lying next to Liam amongst the debris and clutching his face in both hands, watching Liam’s blood run over his fingers. _

_It makes Zayn angry – there should be a sign, he thinks, something to show what ended here, that this is the place where Zayn’s world shattered into a million tiny pieces as small as the glass from the windscreen. There should be a warning to people, to obey the speed limit, to wear their seatbelt, to brake for red lights. Not to fall for brown-eyed PE teachers with soft lips and a voice like honey, because they’ll be ripped out of your life, taken from you at twenty-eight._

_Instead, all there is to mark the emptiness that rings in Zayn’s head every minute of every day is three bouquets of flowers and a white cross at the side of the road._

_Insignificant, anonymous._

_Almost like it never happened._

_At Liam’s grave, however, it hits Zayn like a hook from a boxer’s right hand. He’d been too exhausted by the funeral service to pay much attention to the burial, just remembers staring down into the ground at the black coffin that he knew, somehow, contained Liam’s body. He couldn’t reconcile it with the Liam he knew – full of life, warm, strong, a constant in Zayn’s daily routine._

_But now, standing on the patch of dirt with Liam’s name on a stone at the head of it, it’s all too real. Knowing that Liam is down there, six feet under Zayn’s boots, solidifies his absence for Zayn. There’s something so permanent about graveyards, Zayn thinks, the way they seem like they’ve been around forever and they’re never going away._

_That’s what this is, this pain, this hollow inside Zayn’s chest – it’s permanent, and he’s never going to feel like he did when Liam was alive._

_Zayn’s head spins and his legs give way, colliding with the dirt with a crunch of bone and earth. Folding over himself, he presses his forehead to the cool, wet grass, thinking of Liam down there and wanting to scratch at the dirt and bury himself with Liam, to have this done with, to not have to think and hurt and ache anymore, to live with a Liam-sized hole in his heart for the rest of his life._

_He breathes in the smell of damp earth and hears Harry’s voice above him, feels hands on his shoulders pulling him upright, but still he strains his ears for the sound of Liam’s heartbeat, somewhere down there, knowing that even though the headstone bears his name, there’s nothing left of the Liam that Zayn loved._

_//_

__"Nobody warns how you will be torn apart_  
to the point you need to rebuild yourself."_  
Danielle Smelter, ‘Mother’ 

_Zayn, being an English teacher, is fairly familiar with the cliché that home isn’t four walls, but two arms and a heartbeat. But he’s never realised how true that is until now._

_Of course, his home was his and Liam’s apartment, the home they made together for three years, hanging paintings and choosing curtains and collecting all the debris that accumulates over a lifetime – or, in their case, in a minuscule fraction of their lifetime._

__(When he does the math, he realises that Liam was with Zayn for precisely one seventh of his lifetime, which somehow seems insignificant and colossal at the same time)._ _

_Now that Liam’s gone, the apartment doesn’t feel like home to Zayn anymore, and he knows it’s because it wasn’t the carpet or the curtains or the bedspread that made it home, it was Liam._

_Zayn’s home was the space in between Liam’s ribs, the back of his neck and the soft patch of skin where his thumb met his palm. It was Liam’s laugh and the sound of him singing in the shower that made this home, not the furnishings, and now that he’s gone Zayn feels like he’s living with a ghost. He’s reminded at every turn that this apartment was never really his, only his and Liam’s, the way the two of them always were – Zayn-and-Liam, Liam-and-Zayn. Inseparable._

_He tries to think of moving on like quitting smoking. He’d done it when he first started teaching – he was already a broody English teacher whose PhD was in contemporary poetry, he didn’t need to exaggerate the stereotype; and besides, he didn’t want to be a bad influence on the kids. So he cut down, day by day, chewing gum or playing mindless games on his phone when his fingers itched for a cigarette, when his lungs gasped for the bittersweet pull of smoke. It was easier, after he met Liam, to stop altogether._

_He and Liam did sometimes share one cigarette – _just one_ , Liam would always say – if they’d had a particularly stressful day. Usually it was around the students’ exams or the beginning of term. Zayn would take the packet out of the drawer in the kitchen where they kept them, and slide one thin, rolled up paper out, enjoying the feel of it between his fingers. Then he and Liam would pass it back and forth on their tiny balcony, pressed together for warmth in winter or lounging against the railing in summer, swapping stories about their day or what was going on with their families back home. _

_Later, when they were both lying in bed, Zayn would breathe in the scent of smoke on Liam’s skin, mingled with his familiar musk and the smell of toothpaste._

_He still takes the pack out sometimes, when his lungs get tight from loneliness, when he’s sleepless at 2am, brain going frantically in circles and eyes burning, or when he’s trying to mentally prepare for the day and his fingers need something to hold onto. The smell always makes him think of Liam, the fact that he liked Marlboro lights rather than Zayn’s preferred menthols, the way the cigarette looked so slender and fragile between Liam’s fingers. Zayn had thought, to start with, it would reignite both their habits, but for some reason it hadn’t. They always stopped at one, sliding the packet of cigarettes and the lighter back into the kitchen drawer before going to brush their teeth, the thick taste of smoke still heavy on their tongues._

_Now, Zayn thinks, he could spiral back into addiction, without Liam here to stop him, but so far he hasn’t. He thinks of Liam’s strict rule about only having one, when they needed it, and he stops himself._

_It feels like it’s the one thing he has control over now that Liam’s gone._

_But trying to move on from Liam isn’t like trying to quit cigarettes. There’s no gradual weaning, no slow tapering off of a habit, he was just there one day and gone the next. And Zayn craves him like a habit, doesn’t know what to do with his hands when he lies awake in bed in the morning, squinting in the sun cutting through the curtain, and misses Liam’s body lying next to him, warm and solid. But unlike the cigarettes he no longer relies on, Liam isn’t there when he gives in to his cravings and seeks them out, waiting in a kitchen drawer to be pulled out when he’s needed._

_He was like a habit, Zayn realises, something he’d become addicted to without even realising it. The one Zayn blindly turned to when he was watching an interesting documentary to make sure Liam was enjoying himself, but he was almost always watching Zayn more closely than the television. He was the one Zayn called whenever something went wrong, when he couldn’t find his keys or left his book on the train, or he’d had an exhausting day at work and couldn’t face a department meeting. Now that he doesn’t have Liam to fall back on to guide him through the trials and tribulations of every day, he feels lost, shaky, unsure of himself, like he’s going through withdrawals. Liam gave him a better high than any cigarette, joint or drink could, and going cold turkey feels worse, he thinks, than it would for any drug addict._

_//_

__"And I can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t sit still or fix things and I wake__  
up and I  
wake up and you’re still dead, you’re under the table, you’re still  
feeding  
the damn dog, you’re cutting the room in half."  
Richard Siken, ‘Straw House, Straw Dog’ 

__April 15th 2022_ _

_After he’s had his final checkup on his ankle at the hospital and the brace has been removed, Zayn’s doctor assigns him a therapist (whether it has anything to do with the fact that Zayn tells him he wishes it had been his neck instead of his ankle, he isn’t sure). His therapist tells him that going through Liam’s things in the apartment and packing them away will be helpful for Zayn, help him achieve closure or something like that._

_Zayn doesn’t believe Dr Nestor, but he finds himself sitting in their living room two months after the funeral, trying to remember what was Liam’s and what wasn’t, and what had become shared property after three years of living together. He tries to figure out which books Liam had bought from the second-hand sales the school library held each year, which cushions he’d picked out in Ikea, which tee shirts had belonged to Liam and which ones were Zayn’s that Liam had commandeered._

_He’s reached the bottom shelf of the bookcase, a pile of books teetering next to him that only Liam would have bought – kids fantasy novels, some football player’s autobiography, _100 Pasta Dishes to Make At Home_. His fingers trace the spine of a leather album on the lowest shelf, and he pulls it out, letting it fall open on the floor in front of him. _

_It’s the photo album Liam had given him last Christmas – they’d been saving for a trip to America, so they’d been tight on cash, and the album had been Liam’s way of giving Zayn something he could treasure without spending too much – his words, not Zayn’s._

_Of course._

_Liam was always better with words – always knew what to say when Zayn was mad at Louis for something, or when he was dealing with difficult kids in his class._

_Always said ‘I love you’ when Zayn needed to hear it most. Sometimes when Zayn was mid-sentence._

_Zayn rubs the tears off his cheeks with the back of his hand and looks down at the page in front of him – it’s a photo of him and Liam at Harry’s 23rd birthday, just a few weeks after they’d made their relationship official. Zayn remembers it like it was yesterday._

_They’d gone for dinner at a little Italian place around the corner from Harry’s flat that he liked, just the five of them. Harry and Louis were their usual inappropriate selves across the table from Liam, Zayn and Niall. He and Liam had shared a plate of spaghetti while the others teased them about re-enacting the scene from Lady and the Tramp, and Liam kept his hand on Zayn’s knee the whole night but was too shy to kiss him in front of everyone._

_Zayn remembers being so happy, to have Liam next to him while he celebrated with his friends, while they watched Louis lead Harry into the middle of the restaurant while Dean Martin played, and laugh until the tears streamed down their faces as the two of them danced, or attempted to._

_Zayn almost hadn’t seen Niall with his camera out, but at the last minute he’d thrown his arm around Liam’s shoulders and buried his face in Liam’s neck to hide from the flash. Niall had just smirked at him when he emerged and showed them the photo._

_“One for the books,” he’d said._

_He was right, Zayn thinks, looking down at the photo now, glued into the album at a wonky angle with Liam’s unmistakeable scrawl next to it, reading _‘us at Haz’s 23rd, 2017. high on life :)’__

_Liam’s face is radiating pure joy into the camera, while Zayn’s smile is just visible at the crook of his shoulder. Liam looks so _young_. He’s smiling like only Liam could – his eyes disappearing into the grin, his mouth stretched wide, unable to contain his happiness. It’s exactly the way Zayn had felt sitting next to him that night wiping Bolognese sauce off each other’s chins, like his body couldn’t contain his happiness._

_Zayn slams the book shut and hurls it with all his might across the room, watches it hit the lamp on the coffee table and crash to the ground._

_It releases a fraction of the pressure he feels pounding in his chest, like this time it’s his anger that his body can’t contain, his grief and his loneliness and all the huge feelings he tries to push down so they don’t choke him. He knocks over the stack of books next to him with a sob, wanting to rip out every page that Liam pored over, every word that made him smile or raise an eyebrow or nod thoughtfully._

_Zayn clambers to his feet, half-blinded by his tears, and starts pulling all the books out of the bookcase, strewing them around the room in his rage. He turns and sees the cushions on the sofa that Liam had insisted on buying, and strides over, grabs them and sinks his hands into the stupid chevron-patterned fabric until it rips, until he’s choking on feathers in the air around him._

_He smashes the vase that he’d always bought fresh flowers for because they made Liam smile – daffodils were his favourite but they had a short season, so Zayn made do with yellow lilies and dahlias in between times. The shards of glass cover the carpet but he doesn’t care, he just wants it all gone, gone, gone._

_He goes into the kitchen, pulling out mugs and plates and glasses, not because they remind him of Liam but because the way they crash against the kitchen tiles makes Zayn feel like he’s in control of something. The sound of shattering porcelain deafens him, and he hears the dogs barking from in the bedroom, adding to the chaotic noise in his head. Zayn brings his hands up to his face and finds them covered in blood – probably from one of the broken plates – and realises he’s still sobbing. He can’t breathe, feels his throat burn and his stomach cramp from the strain that racks through him, and he sinks to the floor amongst the shattered dishes and buries his head in his knees._

_He thinks about what Liam would be doing right now, if it had been Zayn in the driver’s seat, if the car had been coming from the opposite direction, if Zayn had been the one not wearing his seatbelt. Liam would be calm, probably, dealing with everything the right way, the way the therapist told him, like he always did. He’d remember to feed the dogs and he’d remember to eat. He’d probably go for runs instead of smashing half his fucking possessions, and he’d cry in the shower where no one could see him instead of on the tube or in the middle of the supermarket where the staff stare at Zayn like he’s crazy._

_He wants to tear the world apart, rip it to shreds with his bare hands, take down buildings and forests and mountains until there’s nothing left. He doesn’t want to see people on the street going to work like everything is fine, like life is so fucking normal. He doesn’t want to see the sun come out from behind the clouds or birds flying home to roost._

_He just wants it all to stop._

_He thinks about cliff edges and tall bridges and train tracks. He thinks about passing trucks and loaded guns and an overflowing bathtub._

_But he’s not even strong enough for that, he thinks bitterly. He digs his fingers into his thighs and heaves long, rattling breaths, and thinks about the quiet of being underwater for a long time until the dogs stop barking, and his mind goes blank._

_//_

__April 16th 2022_ _

_Zayn’s still curled up on the kitchen floor when Louis and Harry come to check on him the next morning. Harry shakes him awake, and Zayn startles – he doesn’t remember falling asleep. Harry looks white as a sheet, his lips shaking, and Zayn realises why as he looks around him at the mess he’d made the night before._

_“Zayn, Jesus, what did you do,” Harry says, kneeling down next to him and taking Zayn’s face in his hands. Zayn remembers the blood on his palms and clutching at his cheeks._

_“M’fine, Haz,” he says, his voice hoarse from crying. His throat feels like he’s swallowed gravel. “Just – lost it, trying to pack up Liam’s –“ his voice starts trembling again, but he won’t let himself break again. It won’t solve anything._

_It won’t bring Liam back._

_“Trying to pack up Liam’s stuff,” Zayn says. Harry’s face crumples, and he pulls Zayn into his chest._

_“Why didn’t you tell us? We could’ve helped, we can – we can do it for you, you don’t have to –“_

_“Therapist said it would – help,” Zayn says stiffly against Harry’s jersey, trying to push down his need to scream and scratch at his skin until it bleeds. Harry rubs circles on Zayn’s back, and Zayn tries to breathe._

_“C’mon, let’s get you into the shower.”_

_Zayn hates it, hates how Harry treats him like a child and how Louis can’t look at him as he gets the dustpan from under the sink and starts to clean up. How the dogs stare at him dolefully when he opens the bedroom door to get a towel and whimper at him. He hates what he’s done to everyone, that he can’t keep it together for one fucking night to put away a few books and photo albums. He hates that Harry feels like he has to stay in the bathroom while Zayn showers, probably so he doesn’t try to drown himself, which Zayn considers doing for a minute or two before realising how long it would take for their shower to fill up with enough water for it to work._

_He feeds the dogs when he gets out of the shower, but he can’t bring himself to cuddle Loki when he rubs up against Zayn, remembering how Liam would give the pup a hug every morning before they left for work, and how Loki would bound up to them every night when they got home. Zayn hates how Loki looks now, like he’s figured out Liam isn’t coming back and he doesn’t know why. He looks at Zayn like he’s waiting for answers. But Zayn can’t give them to him, so he pours out their biscuits and walks away, ignoring Loki’s piercing blue eyes and Rhino’s snuffles behind him._

_Louis’s cleaned up most of the mess, and has started making the same pile of books that Zayn had started last night. He sees the photo album at the bottom of the stack, and closes his eyes, feeling briefly faint._

_When he opens them, Harry’s looking at him closely._

_“When’s the last time you ate?” he asks._

_Zayn tries to remember, he really does, but the last few days, weeks even, are a blur. He barely notices when it’s morning or evening, let alone when he’s supposed to be eating._

_“Last night,” he lies, and Harry frowns at him._

_“Liar. C’mon, we’re going to get something to eat, because I doubt you’ve got anything here. Lou, you want anything?”_

_Louis looks up at them, his eyes flat and grey instead of their usual bright, fiery blue._

_“Um. I think I’ll just make a tea,” he says, and Harry goes over to him immediately, whispering something softly in his ear and kissing the top of his head._

_Zayn aches seeing them together, the same as they always have been, only quieter, softer now, something different in the way Louis bows his head to Harry’s shoulder briefly and Harry’s fingers linger on the sleeve of Louis’s tee shirt._

_Zayn almost wants to scream at them to get out, to leave him alone because they remind him of everything he had with Liam, but Harry and Louis were never like Liam and Zayn. They were explosive fights at 2am when one of them would come knocking at Liam and Zayn’s door, and dancing in the middle of restaurants and mad kisses in the rain. They were burning flames, while Liam and Zayn were glowing embers, folding into each other when they were together, quiet glances from across the room, silent words and smiles only for each other. Zayn doesn’t want what Harry and Louis have, he wants what he and Liam had. And he chokes when he realises he’ll never be able to have that with anybody else again._

_If he can’t have Liam, he doesn’t want anyone._

_//_

_Harry drives them to a café round the corner, orders them two coffees and two plates of eggs, and watches Zayn eat. Zayn wants to throw up every bite, but he chokes it down because he knows how he must look to Harry after last night. When he’s eaten half his plate, and he doesn’t think he can physically keep down any more, he sighs and puts down his knife and fork. But Harry doesn’t tell him to keep eating._

_“Sorry,” Zayn says, his eyes cast down at his plate. He’s not sure exactly what he’s apologising for – the mess he made last night, for not finishing his eggs, or for being a complete waste of a human being._

_“For what?” Harry asks gently, and Zayn shrugs._

_“Last night. I don’t know – I didn’t mean to –“_

_“It’s ok,” Harry says, his voice still quiet and deep, like it always is. “Last week Louis gave a kid detention for looking at him the wrong way. I threw out an entire pot of curry because I forgot to add the lime juice at the right stage. We’re all on edge, we all have our breaking point. It’s okay to snap sometimes.”_

_Zayn nods, because he gets it. Harry and Louis and Niall lost a friend. Nicola and Ruth lost a brother. Karen and Geoff lost a son. But they didn’t lose the one person they were put on earth to be with, the one person who could love them the way they needed to be loved. They didn’t lose what Zayn lost._

_“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry,” Zayn says, not sure of what else to say that isn’t _you don’t miss him as much as I do.__

_“You can stop apologising,” Harry says. “You have your own ways of dealing with things, and that’s fine. Just – we just don’t want you to hurt yourself.”_

_Zayn looks up at Harry and sees his green eyes glistening with tears. He wants to flip the table, send the plates and cutlery crashing to the floor, but he folds his hands in his lap and tries not to think about rosebud lips and tattooed fists curled in the sheets._

_“I won’t,” he says, but he doesn’t mean it._

_Harry takes him to get groceries after breakfast, because the only thing Zayn’s bought for weeks is dog food and the occasional frozen pizza. He trails round after Harry as he puts vegetables, rice, pasta, bread, eggs, cheese and milk into the trolley._

_Then he sees a boy with broad shoulders and chestnut curls quiffed on his head stacking shelves, and Zayn drops a bag of sugar all over the floor, almost calls out ‘Liam’. The boy turns around, and the word dies on Zayn’s tongue because it’s not Liam, his cheeks are too full and his nose is the wrong shape._

_Then he feels utterly stupid, because of course it’s not Liam. It can’t be, because he’s gone, and even though Zayn knows this, the reminder doesn’t hurt any less. Zayn stammers an apology as the boy comes over to clean up the sugar, and runs out of the aisle._

_He leans up against a shelf, breathing heavily, and pulls a folded photograph out of his wallet. Zayn’s seen Liam, or thinks he’s seen him, countless times since the accident, and it almost makes him think he’s forgotten what Liam looks like, if he keeps mistaking strangers for him._

_But the photo reminds him. It’s Liam, asleep on the sofa with Loki on his chest. Zayn remembers the movie they were watching, _A New Hope_ , his least favourite Star Wars film, but Liam had forced him to put it on, and then promptly fallen asleep with his feet in Zayn’s lap and the dog on his chest. The glow of a lightsaber fight lit up Liam’s skin while he slept, and Zayn had slipped carefully off the sofa to take a picture, not wanting to wake Liam. He’d had it printed out a couple of days later and kept it in his wallet ever since. He can’t count the times he’s smoothed out the creases in the paper, traced the line of Liam’s eyebrow and his jaw, felt his heart swell at the memory, of teasing Liam when he woke up because Zayn was usually the one who fell asleep in movies._

_“Zayn?” he hears Harry call from down the aisle, and he folds the photo up carefully, sliding it into his wallet and putting it back in his pocket._

_“Here,” he says, rounding the corner to see Harry, wide-eyed with his knuckles white on the trolley._

_“Jeez, Haz, I’m not some five year old who’s gonna get abducted in Tesco’s,” Zayn says, keeping his voice light with some effort. Harry swipes at him and Zayn ducks, a short laugh escaping him, then Harry herds him to the checkout._

_Normal, Zayn thinks, this is normal. This is what people do every day without wanting to scream, without wanting to knock over grocery shelves or run out of the store at the first sight of a boy with brown eyes and curly hair._

_He doesn’t know when things that are supposed to feel normal will stop feeling so strange to him, strange because Liam isn’t here to remind him to buy toothpaste or to bring the reusable shopping bags. That’s Zayn’s normal, not Harry paying for his groceries and helping the girl working the checkout pack them into plastic bags. Not coming home to half his stuff cleared out of the lounge and his bedroom, and Louis curled up on the couch with Loki and Rhino, sniffling into his cup of tea. Not falling asleep at one in the afternoon because he’s so tired of pretending that Liam isn’t gone and everything isn’t fucked up, pretending that this is all normal, normal, normal._

_//_

__"It is strange how the dead leap out at us on street corners_  
and in dreams."_  
Virginia Woolf, ‘The Waves’ 

__May 2nd 2022_ _

_The curly-haired boy at the supermarket isn’t the first or the last time Zayn imagines he sees Liam. There are boys on trains and staring into shop windows on the street, strangers walking ahead of him on the way home that he has to stop himself from running up to and turning them around, just to make sure it isn’t really Liam._

_But there’s one place he sees Liam where he knows it can’t be anyone else._

_He’s getting out of the shower on a Monday morning and avoiding his own eyes in the mirror when he notices someone standing in the bathroom, half-obscured by steam. At first, Zayn thinks it’s an intruder, some burglar or murderer about to recreate the shower scene from Psycho here in Zayn’s ensuite. But then he sees the familiar silhouette, and thinks he’s gone completely crazy, or maybe he just hasn’t eaten or slept properly for so long that he’s descended into hallucinations._

_But it’s him._

_It’s Liam, standing there in his bathroom in the same tee shirt he was wearing the night of the crash, slightly torn at the neck where Zayn had pulled it off him in a rush once, his hair curling across his forehead in the steamy room. He still looks unbearably perfect, eyes glowing bright like coals, his lips twisted in a worried line, his hands, large and tattooed, resting on his thighs. He looks so solid and real, while Zayn himself feels like he’s about to dissolve in the steamy air around him._

_He wants to reach out and touch Liam, to make sure he’s really there, to hold onto anything that will stop him drowning in air. But he feels heavier than lead, like the room is pressing in on him from all sides, that the steam from the shower is filling up his lungs until he can’t breathe._

_“Zayn,” Liam says, and his voice almost sounds as if he’s just as surprised to see Zayn as Zayn is to see him. Although, surprised is hardly the right word._

_Zayn feels like the world has stopped turning, like he’s been tipped sideways into a parallel universe where Liam is alive, where Zayn doesn’t spend every minute of every day missing all the things that Liam took with him when he died – his sleepy good mornings, the smell of his cologne, his broad chest that Zayn preferred as a pillow to anything money could buy._

_“I’m – this isn’t real,” Zayn says, his voice sounding strangely calm in his own ears._

_It’s the only logical thing he can think to say – of course this isn’t real. Liam is dead. Zayn watched them put his body in the ground._

_Liam takes a step towards him, and Zayn is suddenly acutely aware that he’s naked. It’s not that he hasn’t been naked in front of Liam before – in the beginning, they spent more time naked around each other than they did clothed – but it feels different now, more intimate in the screaming silence of the bathroom with Liam’s ghost standing in front of him._

_There’s no other way Zayn can think to describe him. Even though Liam looks so real, so alive, like he could walk over and touch Zayn with only his fingertips and put back everything that fell to pieces when he died, Zayn knows, somewhere in the region of his neocortex where he’s still capable of processing logic, that it’s not possible._

_“It’s real,” Liam says gently, and the words seem to reach Zayn as if from far away, or from underwater. “I don’t – I don’t know how, but you’re not dreaming. It’s – it’s me, I’m here.” Liam sounds choked, and all of a sudden Zayn can’t stand it, can’t stand to have Liam here but not here, not really, not close enough for Zayn to touch._

_Liam obviously senses something in Zayn’s demeanour, and he steps back again, almost at the doorway of the bathroom. His hand comes up to scratch at the back of his neck, and that’s Liam, it’s so essentially _Liam_ that Zayn thinks that when he remembers Liam in fifty years, a hundred years, it will be by that gesture. _

_And Zayn needs him closer, but maybe this is close enough._

_“Ok,” he breathes, trying to calm his hammering heartbeat. “Ok. You’re real. Let me – let me get dressed, and call the school, and we can – we can talk.”_

_It sounds crazy to him, still, but he’d rather lose his mind fully clothed than naked in the bathroom. Liam smiles a little, then, and it sends sparks dancing across the surface of Zayn’s skin, just the smallest glimpse of the Liam he remembers that reignites the slumbering embers in his chest._

_Zayn walks past him into the bedroom, careful not to brush against him, though he’s not sure he’d be able to if he tried. He’s not sure how the physics of this situation works._

_Zayn quickly throws on some track pants and a tee shirt – one that isn’t Liam’s. He doesn’t know why, but he feels like it wouldn’t be right. He quickly rings the school secretary to tell her he won’t be coming in, and receives no argument – everyone’s been walking on eggshells around him since he came back to work a week ago, as if they’re worried he’s going to explode at any minute._

_Zayn’s conscious of Liam watching him as he dresses and makes the call, can feel his energy radiating through the room towards Zayn, like he always used to be able to. Zayn always knew when Liam walked into a room, though he wasn’t sure how. It was like a change in temperature or something, or just a vibration that ran through Zayn’s blood when Liam was close to him. He might not be physically here, now, but Zayn can still feel him, and it makes him a little more sure that maybe, this really is happening._

_Suddenly, Zayn hears scratching at the bedroom door, and goes over to find Loki and Rhino outside, looking up at Zayn expectantly. Almost as soon as he’s got the door open, Loki bounds into the room, sniffing the air excitedly. Zayn realises, with a tightness in his chest and a burning in his throat, that the dog can sense Liam too, but Loki doesn’t seem to be able to see him. Zayn turns around to see Liam standing stock still in the doorway between the bathroom and their bedroom, watching Loki sniff the air around his legs and whine._

_“He knows it’s you,” Zayn says incredulously._

_“Zayn, get him out of here,” Liam pleads, as Loki’s whining rises in pitch, the dog obviously confused as to why he can sense his old master, but not see or feel him. It breaks something in Zayn, to see the animal so panicked and frantic, and to see Liam unable to comfort Loki, unable to do anything except stand in the doorway while Loki starts to bark._

_Zayn walks over and takes the huskie gently by the collar, leading him out of the room as Loki struggles against him, trying to get back to Liam. Zayn takes him into the kitchen, trying to soothe the distressed pup, but he can barely bring himself to look at Loki as he leaves him and Rhino there, throwing some biscuits in their bowl in a poor attempt to console them. He goes back to the bedroom and closes the door behind him. Liam looks pale and shaken, fighting back tears and clenching his fists._

_“It’s not fair,” Zayn says, and Liam closes his eyes, sighing heavily._

_“I know,” he says. “I wish I could just tell him what happened.”_

_“It wouldn’t make it any easier,” says Zayn, thinking of himself, knowing exactly what happened to Liam and still not being able to deal with it most days._

_Feeling weak at the knees, Zayn sits down on the end of the bed, their bed, and Liam sits next to him. Zayn notices the mattress doesn’t dip the way it usually would under Liam’s weight._

_“You really are a ghost,” Zayn says, part of him wanting to laugh at how ridiculous that sounds, part of him wanting to cry because if Liam’s a ghost, that means he’s really dead._

_“I guess you could call it that,” Liam says, looking down at his knees. Zayn wants to reach over and cover Liam’s hand with his own, but he’s still too scared to touch Liam, for fear his hand will go right through him. That’s what would happen if they were in a ghost film, Zayn thinks, like the ones he used to force Liam to sit through, holding his boyfriend’s hands through the scary parts so Liam couldn’t cover his eyes, and laughing when Liam jumped._

_“I don’t know what it means, and I don’t know how long it’s going to last,” Liam says softly._

_“Where have you…where have you been. Until now?” Zayn asks, the words heavy and awkward in his mouth. Liam mulls the question over, as if he’s not sure how to answer._

_“I was asleep,” he says at last, and Zayn nods as if that makes any kind of sense. “At least, it felt like I was asleep. I remember being with you, in the car. I remember – it happening. And then I just woke up here, now.”_

_Zayn takes in this information the same way he remembers learning about space in school. Knowing that the earth’s solar system made up only a miniscule fraction of the planets and stars, and that you could travel at the speed of light for centuries and never reach the edge of space, was different to understanding how that could be possible._

_“What does it feel like?” Zayn asks next. Liam shrugs._

_“The same. I feel like me. I don’t feel….dead. Even though I remember dying.”_

_Zayn closes his eyes, feeling faint._

_“Zayn,” Liam says, and Zayn opens his eyes to look at him._

_He’s close, close enough for Zayn to count his eyelashes, to see the way the brown at the edge of his irises turns golden before fading to white. He’s close enough to see the cracks in Liam’s lips, the pores on his nose, all the small imperfections Zayn fell in love with and worshipped every day for four years. He’s overwhelmed by the need to kiss Liam, just to taste him one more time, to feel his breath on Zayn’s lips._

_He’s thought about their last kiss so many times it feels like a scene from his favourite film – a quick peck when Liam had come in from a run, sweat making his mouth salty and his chest hot and damp against Zayn’s. Then the phone had rung, Ruth pleading with Liam to help her after another one of Richie’s bouts of drunken rage, and Liam had shut up tight like a locked room that Zayn wasn’t allowed into. He’d taken a shower and changed out of his running clothes before snatching the keys off the hall table and storming downstairs to the car._

_Forgetting to put his seatbelt on._

_Driving through a red light._

_But Zayn doesn’t want to think about that now. Liam’s here, or at least partly here, and Zayn feels like he should be grateful for that._

_“It’s got to mean something, right?” he asks Liam next, and Liam smiles again, in a sad sort of way that makes Zayn want to build entire cities just to tear them down._

_“I guess so. I don’t know what it means, but – maybe it doesn’t matter. It means we get more time, in any case.”_

_Zayn nods, though he doesn’t know what’s worse. Not having Liam there at all, not being able to see him at the end of every day and in the morning; or having him here but knowing it’s not really him, only a shadow of his former self._

_It’s enough, Zayn reminds himself. It has to be enough._

_“I miss you so much,” Zayn says quietly, the words coming out before he really thinks about them._

_“I miss you too,” Liam says, and Zayn’s reminded that it’s not just him that’s lost Liam. Liam’s lost everything, too._

_It stops him from being angry at Liam for leaving him here alone, and he feels hot tears burning at the corners of his eyes._

_“I feel like I lost a limb,” Zayn says, letting the words run out of his mouth of their own accord. “I miss you so much I can’t breathe sometimes. No one else knows what it’s like – Harry, Niall, Lou, they all miss you, but they don’t know what it’s like. I don’t know how to do anything without you.”_

_Zayn looks up at Liam through his tears and sees that he’s crying too. It makes Zayn sob even harder._

_“You’re doing just fine,” Liam says thickly. Zayn shakes his head._

_“I almost lost it, the other night. I was trying to put away your things, your books and all, and I found that album you made me last Christmas. I tore the place apart, smashed a vase and some plates and cups. I got so angry at myself for not being able to cope, I thought about ending it all. But I couldn’t even do that,” Zayn says bitterly, watching Liam’s expression go from sorrowful to concerned._

_“Zayn, you can’t think like that,” Liam says, his voice laced with worry. “It won’t help anything.”_

_“I know that,” Zayn says. “But it doesn’t change how I feel. I don’t want to be here without you, I don’t want to go to school if you’re not there. I don’t want to have another birthday if I can’t spend it with you. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking for you in other people,” Zayn says. He’s never meant anything more in his life._

_“You have to,” Liam says. “People need you. Your mum needs you, your sisters need you. Your students need you. Harry and Louis and Niall need you.”_

_“What about what I need?” Zayn says, feeling helpless and petulant, because no matter how much he argues with Liam about what he needs or what he wants or what he can and can’t do, none of it will bring Liam back, so none of it matters anyway._

_“I know,” Liam says at last, realising, too, that it’s hopeless to keep arguing. “Just promise you’ll try not to give up, for me.”_

_Zayn nods, not knowing what else to say._

_“I’m going to make some tea,” he says, not because he wants anything to drink but because he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He thinks about offering Liam a cup but then realises how stupid that is, and gulps his offer down._

_“I’ll wait here,” Liam says softly, and Zayn nods before going into the kitchen. Loki and Rhino look up expectantly as he walks in, then look down again when they realise it’s just Zayn. On autopilot, he boils the kettle and puts a teabag in a mug, unable to stop thinking about Liam’s presence in the bedroom down the hall and what it means that he’s here, either back from the dead or a manifestation of Zayn’s grief and loss and memories. He doesn’t bother to wait for the tea to steep, just carries the mug with the bag in it back to the bedroom, about to ask Liam if he thinks anyone else will be able to see him._

_But the bedroom’s empty. The covers are creased where Zayn was sitting, but there’s no trace of Liam. He covers are smooth and flat where he’d been sitting – or where Zayn had imagined him to be sitting, he’s no longer sure._

_He goes into the bathroom, but it’s empty as well, everything exactly as it had been before Zayn stepped out of the shower. Feeling numb, Zayn leaves his tea on the bathroom counter and goes back into the bedroom, sitting down in the place where Liam had been. The dogs come in soon after and he lets them jump up on the bed, eventually lying on his back and burying his face in Loki’s fur until he somehow falls asleep._

_//_

_He doesn’t know how long he sleeps for after Liam’s gone, but the moon is starting to cast a silvery glow on the bedsheets when his phone rings and wakes him. He answers sleepily and is greeted by Louis, calling to ask where he is and why he wasn’t at school, his voice laced with worry. Zayn honestly doesn’t know what to tell him, so he says he wasn’t feeling up to it and leaves it at that._

_“Do you want to come over for dinner?” Louis asks. “Harry’s making steaks, we’ll watch something shit on TV and you can crash on the couch. I’m out getting ice cream for dessert, I can come and pick you up?”_

_Louis doesn’t often get overbearing, but when he does, Zayn knows there’s no saying no to him. So he agrees, and waits until Louis texts him telling Zayn he’s outside, and lets himself be driven to his and Harry’s apartment. It smells like food and French pear candles and home, and Zayn eats his steak then watches Gogglebox until something reminds him of Liam, and he pretends to fall asleep._

_When Harry notices, he switches off the TV and ushers Louis softly out of the room, pulling a blanket over Zayn’s shoulders. He breathes carefully, in and out, evenly, until Harry turns the light off and he sighs. He knows he’s not going to be sleeping tonight._

_He lies there and thinks about Liam, the Liam he had seen today. He wonders where Liam had come from, and where he’d gone when Zayn had left to make tea, and whether Zayn had imagined the entire thing in a fever dream of missing Liam. He wonders if that’s the end of seeing Liam, if this was meant to be some kind of sign for Zayn to move on, or if Liam will come back, appear in Zayn’s bathroom while he’s brushing his teeth one morning._

_When Zayn’s eyes are burning and he’s been wishing for sleep for the last two hours, he hears footsteps in the hallway, and quickly closes his eyes, pretending to be asleep. He feels a heavy weight on the end of the couch near his feet, and can smell Harry, the eye cream he puts on before he goes to sleep and his familiar, vanilla smell._

_“I know you’re not asleep,” Harry says, his voice hoarse and low with sleep. Zayn sighs and opens his eyes, sitting up and rearranging the blanket so it covers both their knees._

_“You ok?” Harry asks. “Louis said you looked like you’d seen a ghost earlier.” Zayn almost laughs at how close that is to the truth, but he’s too tired and too strung out on seeing Liam two months after his death to find it very funny._

_He thinks about telling Harry the truth, though he’s not sure how to put it into words. He hadn’t even considered telling Louis, knowing he’d just write it off as Zayn’s grief, telling him he needs to look after himself better, eat more and get more sleep._

_Zayn still isn’t convinced he’d be wrong._

_But Harry’s always been the one that Zayn can talk to, the one who listens quietly and doesn’t judge Zayn for the way he’s feeling or what he thinks. He was always the one Zayn would go to after a fight with Liam (while Liam would call up Louis), who wouldn’t tell Zayn he was being irrational or unfair._

_So maybe, Zayn thinks, he can tell Harry this. Whatever _this_ is. Part of him just wants to hear it said out loud so he can convince himself it really happened. _

_“What is it,” Harry prompts him gently, all wild curls and sleepy eyes, pressed into the couch next to Zayn._

_“I –“_

_God, I’m crazy, Zayn thinks, but then again ‘delusional’ is just another symptom to add to his ever-growing list of flaws._

_“I saw Liam.” Harry looks at him sympathetically._

_“I see him all the time too babe. I almost ran up and hugged a stranger on the tube last week because they had a hand tattoo and were wearing a flannel. It’s normal.”_

_Zayn shakes his head. “I don’t mean like that,” he says. “I mean, it was actually him. Only it wasn’t, it was like, his ghost or something, but he was there, in the flat. We had a conversation.”_

_It sounds even stranger out loud than it did in his head, and it doesn’t make it any more real to Zayn. He chances a look at Harry, who’s just staring at him thoughtfully. He doesn’t look like he thinks Zayn’s lost his mind, so Zayn takes a deep breath and continues._

_“He said it felt like he’d been asleep, and then he just woke up in our bedroom. Then we talked for a bit, and then I went to make tea and when I came back he was gone. I still don’t – I still think I might be insane, but even Loki could sense he was there. He came into the room and was barking at where Liam was standing, but I don’t think he could see him.”_

_Harry’s chewing his lips thoughtfully, and his eyes glimmer in the moonlight coming through their living room window._

_“Dogs can often sense things that lots of people can’t, like earthquakes and stuff.”_

_Zayn stares at him blankly. “You’re not going to ask me if I’m feeling ok? If I’ve been eating enough and sleeping properly?”_

_“If you wanted someone to ask you that, you would’ve told Louis and not me.”_

_“So…you believe me?” Zayn asks, incredulous that Harry would accept his story just like that. It still feels like a fever dream to Zayn, and he was there. Harry just shrugs._

_“It wouldn’t be the craziest thing. I always thought you guys were connected,” he says, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. Zayn rubs at his eyes. He’s tired, he’s so tired of thinking and feeling and existing that he could sleep for a week._

_“He came back for a reason,” Harry says. “Whatever part of Liam you’ve seen and spoken to, he’s here for you, Zayn. Not many people get the opportunity to see the people they love after they’re gone, you shouldn’t waste it.”_

_Zayn nods; he’d thought exactly the same thing when he’d first realised it really was Liam, not a figment of his imagination. Then he sees that Harry’s eyes look bright and full, and Zayn remembers his grandmother passing away about a year ago. It’s another painful reminder that the hurt never goes away._

_“Harry, I know, your nana, she –“ Harry shakes his head quickly, dashing tears off his cheeks._

_“You’re not the only one who misses him, you know,” Harry says quietly, and Zayn feels the cold weight of guilt settle in the pit of his stomach, and he thinks about Niall crying in the middle of the night when he thought Zayn was asleep. He crumples against Harry, fisting his hands in his sleep-wrinkled tee shirt, and lets himself go. Harry drags his fingers through Zayn’s hair and sobs with him, and though Zayn feels wretched for forgetting his friends loved Liam too, it takes a weight off his shoulders, knowing he’s not the only one trying to get through this._

_//_

__May 3rd 2022_ _

_He and Harry must fall asleep like that, curled around each other on the couch, because the next thing he knows, thin fingers are combing through his hair, and he opens his eyes to see Louis standing over them, sunlight streaming through the window behind him._

_“You trying to steal my man, Malik?” Louis rasps, his voice not yet worn-in for the morning._

_Zayn blinks at him, tastes acid as he swallows around Louis’s words. Said so carelessly, as if he doesn’t know that the only person Zayn ever wanted to be with, the only person who filled in the spaces between his words and the fissures in his mind, is gone._

_Zayn’s thoughts must show on his face, because Louis winces._

_“Sorry, shit, sorry, that was so stupid. I didn’t mean – I’m sorry, Zee.” He sounds so distraught, and he’s reaching out for Zayn but not quite touching, as if he’s afraid that if he gets too close one of them, or maybe both, will catch fire._

_“S’okay, Lou,” Zayn says, reaching out for his friend’s hand and pulling him down onto the arm of the sofa next to Zayn. He rests his head on Louis’s knee, closes his eyes and thinks about where Liam is right now, if he just feels like he’s sleeping again, or if he’s come back to the flat to find that Zayn isn’t there. Zayn suddenly feels guilty for leaving._

_“I just – I don’t know how to fucking deal with this,” Louis is saying above him, and it makes Zayn’s blood boil, because of fucking course he doesn’t; none of them do._

_“I just turn everything into a joke, like I always do, and I’m an asshole, but I just don’t – I don’t know what to do.”_

_Louis’s voice is still soft, like grass gently stirring in the wind, so he doesn’t wake Harry. Zayn’s reminded of Harry crying last night, of Niall’s silent tears, and he spreads a hand over Louis’s knee._

_“None of us do,” Zayn says softly. “There’s no way to deal with it. Just try and get through every day. Every ten minutes, sometimes.”_

_He doesn’t really believe what he’s saying, it’s more for Louis’s comfort than his. He probably dredged it up from a session with Dr Nestor, who he hasn’t seen for weeks, or from a school pamphlet on dealing with the loss of someone you loved._

_But Liam isn’t just someone he loved. He was Zayn’s world, his entire universe, and he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to move on from that, or how he’s supposed to forget._

_“Omelette?” Louis asks, and it’s so stupidly normal that it makes Zayn wants to break something._

_“Sure. Thanks,” he says, even though he’s not hungry, doesn’t think he’s’ felt hungry since the crash, doesn’t think he’ll feel hungry for anything but Liam – Liam’s eyes, his hands, his soft calming words – for the rest of his life._

_Louis starts banging pots around in the kitchen and Harry begins to stir next to him, and all Zayn can think about is _Liam, Liam, Liam.__

_//_

__"I will come back from the dead for you."_  
Richard Siken, ‘You Are Jeff’_

__May 6th 2022_ _

_It’s three days before Zayn sees Liam again. Three days of looking round every corner in their apartment, of looking so long at strangers on the tube that they scowl at him or flip him off, of taking a different route home to follow someone he thought was Liam, because he doesn’t want to believe that the visit from Liam in his bathroom was the first and last time Zayn will see him._

_Zayn’s in the bathroom again, brushing his teeth before bed one night and humming something he’d heard on the radio earlier without even realising he’s making a noise, when someone starts singing along with him._

_He and Liam used to do this all the time. One of them would pick up a tune (though usually it was Liam, he was always humming and whistling to himself), and they’d turn it into a duet. Liam would show off, riffing and adding in high notes all over the place, while Zayn held the melody and admired Liam’s honey-golden voice._

_This time, though, Zayn stops short and whips around to see Liam standing in the doorway again, dressed exactly the same as he had been the last time and smiling softly at Zayn. Something sad flickers at the corner of his mouth._

_“You’re back,” Zayn says, his mouth thick with toothpaste, and Liam shrugs._

_“Hey. Sorry I took so long.”_

_Zayn turns around and rinses his mouth with water, then crosses the room to Liam, wanting to pull him in and feel Liam’s solid warmth around him. Then he stops, a few paces short of the door, and wraps his arms around himself, remembering it’s not really Liam. Zayn can’t touch him. He can’t ever have that comfort again._

_The knowledge winds him, drains the energy and happiness he’d had at seeing Liam, at hearing his voice again, right out of him._

_“Zayn? Are you ok?” Liam asks in his usual concerned way._

_“No,” Zayn says, hearing his voice shake. “This is – I can’t do this Liam.”_

_“Zayn, we talked about this, you’re doing fine, you’re great.”_

_“No, I’m not great. I’m just – this is just so….fucked up, and scary, I don’t know how to deal with it,” Zayn says, and feels a little thrum of anger go through him._

_What makes Liam thinks he can just turn up at random and pretend like he isn’t fucking dead? Like Zayn doesn’t spend every minute of his life missing Liam, missing what they had?_

_“Do you think I like this?” Liam asks, his voice turning hard. “Do you think this is easy for me?”_

_“Of course not,” Zayn says, equally angry at himself for ruining this chance to talk to Liam and angry at Liam for not understanding what he’s been through. “But it’s been hard for me as well! Every night I come home and you’re not there, every morning I wake up alone, every time I see a fucking flannel shirt or walk past someone wearing your cologne, I have to remember that you’re gone. Every time I think of something during the day I go to write it down to tell you later, and then I remember that it doesn’t fucking matter, because I can’t tell you anyway,” Zayn says bitterly._

_Liam is silent for a while. He’s beautiful, even in the harsh light of the bathroom, strong jaw and high forehead, his curls dishevelled just like they had been the night of the crash._

_“I can’t make it stop,” he says quietly, “I’m not making myself come back here. I just do.”_

_Zayn feels like he’s been doused in ice cold water, at the thought that he has Liam right here, a part of him at least, and he’s made Liam feel like they shouldn’t use this, whatever this is, to their advantage._

_“No, Liam, I’m sorry. It’s just – everything’s so fucked up, neither of us knows how to deal with this. But it has to be – there has to be a reason for it, right? This doesn’t just….happen.”_

_Liam nods slowly, looking over at Zayn and making his hairs stand up as their eyes meet. Zayn feels at home under Liam’s gaze, those searching eyes that can only belong to Liam._

_“I don’t know who I am when I’m not with you,” Liam says, his voice sounding helpless like it never did when Liam was alive. He was always sure of what to do, what to say, even though Zayn knew it took him a lot of strength and energy to sound like that when inside, he wasn’t as confident as he made out. It had taken Zayn a long time to find that out._

_“Last time,” Liam continues, “I was just sitting here, when you went to the kitchen, and then I wasn’t. I don’t know where I went, I don’t know how long it was, then all of a sudden I was back here.”_

_“It was three days,” Zayn says, looking at Liam closely. There’s something off about him, and not just the fact that he’s not the real Liam, just a trace of the man that Zayn loved, an imprint. He looks lost, helpless, confused, things Zayn never associated with Liam._

_“It felt like a lot longer,” Liam says quietly, and God, Zayn would sell his soul a hundred times over to be able to reach over and touch Liam’s arm right now, to give him some reassurance and comfort. That’s what they were to each other – comfort, home, gentle touches just to remind the other that they were there. Sometimes they didn’t realise they were doing it, until Harry or Niall would point out that they were attached at the hip, that Zayn would stroke a finger through Liam’s beard, when he grew it out, or that Liam would lift Zayn’s chin with his fingers when he was lost in his own head._

_But now Zayn only has his words, not his actions, and he doesn’t know what to tell Liam._

_“Didn’t it feel like you were asleep? Like before?” he asks, frustrated with himself for not being better equipped to console Liam. Liam shakes his head._

_“Not this time. This time it was – like I wasn’t anywhere. It was all just dark and quiet, just me, not sitting or lying or standing just – being somewhere, alone, until I was here.”_

_If Zayn’s honest, what Liam’s describing sounds a lot like his daily reality. Which he knows isn’t possible, because he’s not suspended between the living world and….whatever comes afterwards, but still. He thinks he can understand what Liam is going through._

_“Listen, Li, it’s gonna be ok. We can – we can figure this out, you and me, ok?”_

_Liam closes his eyes, looking faint, and Zayn wonders irrationally if dead people can lose consciousness. Then Liam opens his eyes and his gaze meets Zayn’s, and Zayn feels something dislodge in his chest, something he hadn’t realised had been stuck._

_“I miss you so much,” Liam says, his voice choked, and Zayn feels tears rush to his eyes. He doesn’t even want to say the words back to Liam, knowing the flood that’s built up inside him that will start pouring out if he opens his mouth. Instead he grits his teeth and nods, sniffing, looking at the floor. He can’t meet Liam’s eyes without breaking._

_“Come on,” Liam says, “come into bed and you can tell me about your day.”_

_It sounds so absurd, coming from someone who is no longer alive, who Zayn might be imagining, but Zayn follows Liam into the bedroom, wiping at his cheeks with the back of his hands to no avail. Liam watches while Zayn climbs into bed, and then lies on top of the covers next to him, not making a dent in the sheets. Zayn closes his eyes and tries to pretend that it’s Liam, his Liam, warm and solid and real, in bed next to him._

_“How are the others?” Liam asks softly, and Zayn opens his eyes._

_“They’re ok,” he says. “Louis tries to act like everything’s normal. Haz is taking it pretty hard.”_

_Zayn thinks about his conversation with Harry the other night in their living room. “I told him, about you. About seeing you.”_

_Liam’s expression doesn’t change, and he just nods like he understands._

_“What did he say?”_

_“He said….he said it makes sense,” Zayn says, and Liam laughs softly._

_“Typical Haz,” he says, and Zayn smiles too. That had been exactly what he’d thought._

_“He said he always thought we were connected, in some way,” Zayn says, looking at Liam now, and thinking Harry was probably right._

_“I thought the same thing,” Liam says. “That’s got to be why I’m here, right?” He twists his bottom lip with his teeth nervously, and Zayn wants to reach over and kiss him just to stop him from doing it. But he can’t, so he just nods and twists the sheet between his fingers._

_“Maybe we should ask him,” he says suddenly, looking up at Liam. “Why you’re here, and where you go when you’re not here, and all that. I reckon he’d know a bit,” Zayn says hopefully, and Liam smiles._

_“Yeah. I’d – I’d like to see him again, too. And Louis, and Nialler, and….” He trails off, and Zayn knows he’s thinking of his family. But Zayn knows why he doesn’t say it out loud – most people, when confronted with the likeness of their dead son, wouldn’t be willing to listen to a reasonable explanation of why they’re suddenly there. Zayn’s not even sure how Louis and Niall would react, if he’s honest._

_“Let’s start with Haz,” he says gently, and Liam nods._

_“Are you tired?” Liam asks. It’s what he’d ask Zayn every night, before they went to sleep. Usually Zayn would say yes, because he always was, exhausted from school and marking and reading, but tonight, he feels wide-awake._

_“No.”_

_Liam smiles. “Good. Tell me about your day.”_

_Zayn shrugs. “It was just a normal day. Nothing to tell.”_

_“You used to tell me anyway,” Liam teases, and Zayn smiles. It’s true; even though they worked at the same place, or maybe because of it, Zayn used to recount every detail to Liam after school, and vice versa._

_“Ok. I hate the new PE teacher. The kids hate him too.”_

_The more Zayn starts to talk, the more he relaxes, remembering how therapeutic it was to tell Liam everything he was thinking, how much he’d missed it. Liam never cared how boring or trivial anything was, he said he just liked hearing Zayn talk. So he talks._

_“He never runs drills with the track team, just tells them what to do and watches them. He doesn’t look like he’s run more than two miles in his life – which, yeah, is rich coming from me, but I don’t get paid to teach kids fitness. Oh, and Louis’s doing West Side Story for the autumn show. Reckons he’ll bring in Harry for choreography again.”_

_“Did Harry go to that audition?”_

_Zayn tries to remember. Harry had been going to try out for a contemporary dance company, something better than the shitty theatre he danced with that never paid on time, but Zayn honestly can’t say whether he went or not. He feels terrible, for not asking Harry, for not remembering like Liam does. Like Liam did._

_“I don’t – I don’t know, with everything going on, I forgot to ask. God, I’m so shit.”_

_“You’re not shit,” Liam says, and it sounds so familiar because Zayn’s heard him say it a thousand times before._

_“No, really. This is why I need you,” Zayn says, feeling himself spiralling into self-loathing again. “You were the one to remember that stuff, to ask Harry about his auditions and ask Louis about his sisters and Niall about his designing and – shit, I can’t do any of this without you, Li. I can’t.”_

_“Yes, you can,” Liam soothes him. “No one expects you to remember everything, especially not right now. You know how I told you to write things down?”_

_“Yeah. But I always lose the paper I write it down on, so it’s kind of useless,” Zayn says despondently. Liam chuckles softly._

_“Write it down in your phone then, you plonker. Or are you too technologically inhibited to do that?”_

_Zayn wants to throw a pillow at him, but he’s worried it would go straight through Liam and this illusion that they’ve created, that this is a normal conversation between them, will be shattered._

_“No, m’not,” Zayn grumbles._

_“Good. Then you can use the notes on your phone to write things down. To help you remember. I didn’t pick up on all that stuff naturally, you know. I just learned how to be organised.”_

_Zayn sighs, because of course he’s right. He’s built Liam up as this kind of saint in his mind, someone who remembered every birthday and anniversary and all of Zayn’s favourite foods, but he wasn’t. He’d forgotten Zayn’s birthday one year and Zayn had slept at Niall’s for two days; he’d bought Cheerios instead of Honey Nut Crunch and Zayn had made him go back to the supermarket to get the right one; once, when they first started going out, he even cooked Zayn bacon for breakfast._

_But he got better. He made himself write things down, and made an effort to remember small things about Louis and Harry and Niall, and about Zayn’s parents and sisters. That was what made Liam better than Zayn could ever dream of being, the fact that he tried to be a better person._

_Zayn is done trying though, too tired and bitter and lost without Liam to do anything except wallow in his own sadness. And it’s made him a shit friend, and a shit teacher, and a shitty person in general. And it doesn’t even matter, because he has no one to be better for anymore._

_“Ground control to Major Zayn,” Liam says softly. It’s a little joke he always used to make when he noticed Zayn was getting too deep into his own thoughts. Zayn forces himself to meet Liam’s eyes, and sees them, warm and bright, shining through the darkness in their bedroom._

_“I’m here,” Zayn says, and tries to mean it. He tries to feel himself here, with Liam, or the figment of Liam that he’s talking to. But part of him feels miles away, hovering somewhere above the earth and looking down on himself and Liam, two tiny specks in the universe._

_“I’m here, too,” Liam says, and he sounds so sure. “I’ll stay as long as I can,” he adds, and Zayn nods, closing his eyes, suddenly exhausted by the weight of everything going on his mind._

_“Love you,” he whispers, remembering the words he never got to say back to Liam in the car that night._

_Just before he drifts off to sleep, he hears Liam whisper back._

_“Love you too. Always.”_

_//_

__May 7th 2022_ _

_Liam’s gone when he wakes up in the morning. Zayn’s not sure what he’d expected – for Liam to somehow stay for good, even though the first time he’d appeared he’d barely stayed half an hour. Zayn can’t summon the energy to get out of bed; the duvet feels like a mountain on top of him, weighing him down, pinning him to the mattress like a tonne of bricks._

_Then he remembers his thoughts from last night, about Liam being a better person because he’d tried. If Liam was in Zayn’s position, if the roles were switched, he’d be out of bed already. He’d probably be going for his morning run, a shining example to the kids he taught, then he’d come home and make a healthy breakfast and make it to the tube on time. It makes Zayn think, not for the first time, that it would’ve been better if Zayn had been in the driver’s seat, or if the car had come from the other direction. If it was Zayn hovering in limbo right now, alone in the darkness and quiet, and if Liam had been left behind on earth. Liam would know what to do. He’d be able to comfort Louis and get him to open up about how much he really missed Liam, he’d console Harry and he’d talk to Niall in the middle of the night when he heard him crying._

_Zayn stops his train of thought before he starts thinking about how none of them would even be this upset if it had been Zayn instead of Liam, and forces himself to shove the duvet off and swing his legs over the edge of the bed. He gives himself a minute to rest his head in his hands, trying to banish the dark thoughts that threaten to take over and choke him before he’s even properly awake._

_Liam might have been able to do this better than Zayn can, but that doesn’t mean he can’t try, for Liam’s sake. If he’s lucky enough to still be able to converse with Liam, to be able to whisper to him through the dark before he falls asleep at night, he must be doing something right. So he drags himself to his feet and shuffles into the bathroom for a shower, letting a small part of him hope that Liam appears again in the steam._

_He doesn’t._

_//_

_The phone rings three times before Harry picks up._

_“Zayn, hey,” he says. Zayn doesn’t miss the tone of concern in his voice, and he wonders when he’ll be able to call his friends without them thinking something’s wrong._

_“Hey Haz, what’s up?”_

_“Not much,” Harry says cautiously. “Everything ok?” Zayn almost snaps and gives him the “no, everything’s not ok, nothing’s ever ok without Liam” lecture, but that’s not why he’s calling._

_“Yeah, everything’s fine,” he lies. “I saw Liam again.” He figures it’s best to just be straight out with it._

_“Really?” Harry says. “When?”_

_“Last night. I was brushing my teeth and I turned around and he was just there. He was there till I fell asleep, and then when I woke up he….wasn’t.” Zayn can hear his own voice getting thick, and wills himself not to cry._

_“Do you want me to come over? Or you could come round here, Louis’s making tacos.”_

_Zayn imagines Louis and Harry right now, the windows of their small flat fogged up from Louis’s cooking, Harry sprawled out on the couch and Louis in his socks in the kitchen. His chest starts to seize up when he thinks about what he and Liam would be doing right now, if Liam was still alive._

_“No, I just – he wants to see you guys,” he says._

_Harry’s quiet for a bit, and Zayn thinks he hears a sniff._

_“How – how would that work?” Harry asks after a while._

_“I don’t know,” Zayn admits. “I guess next time he turns up, I could call you guys and you can come over. Or I could bring him to you.”_

_“You make him sound like a pet,” Harry says, and Zayn can tell he’s trying to lighten the mood, but it doesn’t really help._

_“Look, I don’t know how any of this works, ok? One minute he’s not here, the next he is, and then he stays for half an hour or so and then he’s gone. He’s dead but he’s not, he’s a ghost, he’s a figment of my fucked up imagination, I don’t know, ok?”_

_As soon as he’s done ranting, Zayn presses his fingertips into his eyelids._

_“Sorry, Haz, I didn’t mean to go off at you like that,” he says quietly._

_“It’s ok,” Harry says, his voice as warm and soothing as ever. Zayn wants to cry, because he’s never done anything remotely good enough to deserve his friends._

_“Hey, how was your audition?” he asks, wanting to move the conversation away from Liam, and remembering what they had talked about last night. About keeping track of the little things, and being a better person. He can at least start with the first part, Zayn thinks._

_“My – oh. Yeah, it was good. They called me this morning, actually, they want me to go back in for a solo audition.”_

_“That’s great Haz,” Zayn says, and he means it. Harry’s wanted to dance professionally since he was ten, according to Louis, so actually getting a chance to see that through is incredible. If anyone deserves happiness, it’s Harry, Zayn thinks._

_“Thanks,” Harry says, and Zayn’s sure he’s definitely crying now. He needs to hang up before Harry sets him off too._

_“I should go, I have a ton of marking to do,” Zayn says, which isn’t actually a lie._

_“You sure you don’t want tacos?” Harry asks._

_“Not if Louis’s making them,” Zayn says, and both of them laugh, though it feels somewhat forced to Zayn. Still, he thinks, one day this might feel normal again._

_“Ok,” Harry says. “Call me, if anything….if anything happens,” he says, and Zayn knows he doesn’t just mean if Liam shows up._

_“I will. Love you, Haz.”_

_“Love you too Zee.”_

_//_

__"I know when you’re around cos I know the sound_  
I know the sound of your heart."_  
The 1975, ‘The Sound’ 

__May 10th 2022_ _

_The third time it happens, Zayn can sense when Liam appears. He’s just got in from walking the dogs, sweating a little under his jacket, and as soon as he opens the door he can feel it. There’s something different about the apartment, like the air’s been displaced by Liam’s presence. It’s not like when Liam was actually home, when Zayn could hear him singing in the shower or smell him cooking dinner, it’s more subtle than that. Zayn lets the dogs off their leashes and walks cautiously towards the bedroom, opening the door to find Liam lying with his back to Zayn, on the side of the bed where he used to sleep._

_“Liam?”_

_He immediately rolls over, a soft smile on his face._

_“Hey,” Liam says._

_“How long have you been here?”_

_Liam frowns slightly, and it’s so adorable, so adorably _Liam_ that Zayn wants to cry._

_“I’m not sure. Maybe ten minutes?”_

_“Were you asleep?” Liam shoots him a quizzical look._

_“Dead people don’t need to sleep, Zayn.”_

_His words ring in the air between them, and Zayn feels like he’s been slapped in the face. Of course he knows Liam’s dead, and he’s reminded of that fact every day that he has to keep living without him, but to hear the words said out loud sends Zayn reeling. To hear them from Liam himself is even more disconcerting. Liam seems to sense Zayn’s reaction, and sits upright, swinging his legs over the side of the bed._

_“Sorry,” he says. “I just – I’m trying to get used to the idea that I’m…..you know. I thought saying it out loud might be helpful.”_

_Zayn nods faintly. He’s pretty sure he remembers his therapist saying something very similar._

_“I told – um, I told Harry I’d let him know when you showed up next. So they could – so you could see them. Do you – do you still want that?” Zayn asks, noticing that Liam’s eyes have that sad puppy look he always used to get when he was upset. They’d be watching a suicide bombing or earthquake on the news, or talking about a kid who was being bullied at school, and Zayn would look over at Liam to see his eyes shining and his mouth creasing in sadness. It was like he felt other people’s pain physically._

_“Yeah,” Liam says quietly. “I wanna see them.”_

_“Ok,” Zayn says, pulling out his phone. Once he’s called Harry to tell him Liam’s here, he goes into the kitchen to make tea, figuring the other two will need something to hold onto when they see Liam like this. Liam follows Zayn into the kitchen while he puts the jug on, asking him mundane questions about his day, talking to the dogs in the soft, gentle tone he uses only for them, even though Loki and Rhino can’t see him._

_Zayn glances quickly at Liam when he hears Harry knock at the door, and Liam nods, giving him a small smile to let him know he’s ok. That was their thing, when Liam was alive – they didn’t need words to tell each other how they were feeling. A smile meant _I’m okay, don’t worry about me_. A hand on the small of the back was a question, _how are you doing?_ Liam scratching under Zayn’s chin meant _stop thinking so much,_ and Zayn’s fingertips dancing over the back of Liam’s hand was _I love you._ _

_Every touch was some form of _I love you,_ though._

_Zayn opens the door to find Louis and Harry looking nervous, holding hands, which Zayn figures is their body language for _we don’t know what’s going to happen but at least we’re together._ _

_“Hey,” Zayn says as Harry pulls him into a hug, and he opens the door wider for both of them to come in. He throws an arm around Louis’s shoulder and ruffles his hair gently, because the other boy looks terrified. Zayn’s not sure he feels in control of this situation, but he’s almost used to seeing Liam’s ghostly form now, whereas Harry and Louis have no idea what to expect. Maybe they think Liam will still have all his injuries from the crash. Maybe they’re expecting a transparent, hovering figure who can float through walls._

_What Zayn doesn’t expect is for Harry and Louis to walk into the kitchen and not react. Liam’s leaning against the counter, fiddling with the hem of his tee shirt, and his face visibly brightens when he sees the two of them. But Harry and Louis’s faces remain unchanged._

_“Is he in the bedroom?” Harry asks, and Zayn’s heart drops to his stomach when he realises they can’t see him. Liam seems to realise this at the same time, and looks up at Zayn, the kicked puppy expression back on his face, worse than before. Zayn wants to cry._

_“No,” he says, his voice breaking. “He’s right here.”_

_Harry looks at him sadly, while Louis won’t meet his eyes, and Zayn knows they think he’s crazy. Fuck it, he probably is, and this is all probably some grief-induced hallucination where Zayn’s conjured the image of his dead boyfriend on three separate occasions because he can’t cope with the fact that he’s actually gone._

_“Tell them I’m sorry,” Liam says, and Zayn clenches his jaw, shaking his head. He’s not relaying messages from his hallucination to his two best friends who are probably about to check him into a psych ward._

_“Zayn, please,” Liam says, his voice desperate._

_Zayn can’t look at him, and he can’t look at Harry or Louis either. He stares determinedly at the floor until the kitchen tiles blur and his eyes sting. He feels hot tears on his cheeks._

_“Zayn,” Liam says, closer this time, like he’s standing right next to Zayn. Zayn can’t feel anything, not Liam’s usual warmth or the cotton of his tee shirt against Zayn’s arm. He wants all three of them to go away. He wants to put his head under the water of the bath until everything stops hurting._

_“Just tell them I’m sorry, and I miss them,” Liam says, his voice low, and Zayn imagines, just for a second, that he can feel Liam’s breath on his neck. “Please, can you do that for me?” Zayn swallows, and then nods once._

_“He says he’s sorry, and he misses you,” he repeats obediently, and then looks up to see Harry openly crying, and Louis’s jaw working stoically while he stares at the floor. Zayn sees a tear fall from his eyes onto the curve on his cheek before he quickly dashes it away._

_“We miss you too, Li,” Harry says, and Zayn loves him so much in that moment for believing Zayn, or at least pretending to believe him._

_“Tell Louis he looks like a twat in those jeans,” Liam says, his voice thick with tears. Zayn looks at him incredulously, not sure whether he’s being serious, but of course he is. Even in death, Liam doesn’t miss an opportunity to give Louis shit._

_“He says – um, he says you look like a twat in those jeans, Lou,” Zayn says, watching Louis closely. Slowly, Louis looks up at him, his eyes red and shining, his mouth twisted in confusion. Then, slowly, he starts to laugh._

_“Oh my god,” he says, as Harry and Zayn watch him nervously, not sure if he’s on the verge of a breakdown. “Oh my god. Liam’s dead, and he still manages to give me shit about my clothing choices. Classic Payno, ribbing me from beyond the grave.”_

_Zayn genuinely isn’t sure whether Louis’s just playing along, like Harry is, or whether he’s been convinced by Liam’s quip that this is really happening, but Zayn’s too nervous about ruining this moment to ask._

_So he starts laughing too, glancing to his left and seeing Liam smile, full and sad, looking on at Zayn and Louis and Harry laughing together as their tea goes cold._

_Louis ruins the moment, anyway._

_“Tell Payno he’s a dick for dying and leaving us here,” Louis says wetly, and then all three of them are crying, huddling in together so that Louis’s fingers can lace through Zayn’s, and Harry’s arm can snake around Zayn’s waist and Louis can lean his head on Harry’s shoulder. They stay like that for a while, the three of them wetting each other’s clothing with tears and clinging to each other so they don’t fall apart, until Louis coughs and they let go._

_Zayn turns around, and Liam’s gone._

_//_

__"Some souls are bound together,__  
so the poets say,  
but you and he are more than destined, more than merely bound –  
your love is not just written in the stars,  
it is woven into the fabric of the heavens, the essence of the  
cosmos."  
Amrita C, ‘Soulmate Is Too Weak a Word for Him’ 

__May 21st 2022_ _

_Zayn wakes up in a pitch-dark room, the sound of his phone buzzing against the bedside table pounding in his ears. Wildly, he thinks of Liam, hoping he doesn’t wake up, and then remembers._

_The crushing weight of remembering that Liam isn’t here anymore._

_Frowning, Zayn fumbles for his phone and swipes the screen repeatedly until it shuts up, then collapses back on the pillows with the phone pressed to his ear._

_“Mm?” he says._

_“Zayn, listen to this –“_

_“Harry, it’s – “ he holds the phone away from his ear and squints in the LED glare – “three in the fucking morning.”_

_“Is it?” Harry says, and he genuinely sounds surprised. “Sorry, I lost track of time. But you’ve got to hear this Zayn, it’s important.”_

_Zayn rolls over onto his back, resigning himself to wakefulness. When Harry gets in one of these moods, there’s no stopping him._

_“What?” he mumbles, scraping a hand over his face._

_“Listen. _Up to six in ten grieving people have seen or heard their dead loved one, but many never mention it out of fear people will think they’re mentally ill._ It’s not just you, Zee!” Harry says excitedly. Zayn struggles to make his sluggish brain catch up with Harry’s enthusiasm. _

_“Ok….so…..”_

_“I’ve been doing some research,” Harry explains patiently. “I came across this article where it talks about people who have lost their loved ones seeing them or hearing their voice after they’ve died. Like in that movie Ghost, right? It says here they think up to 60 percent of widowers have these visions!”_

_Zayn hasn’t seen the movie Ghost, but he’s pretty sure he knows what Harry’s getting at. He’s silent for a minute as he processes this information._

_He hasn’t seen Liam since that night with Harry and Louis – it’s been almost two weeks. Zayn’s still trying to tell himself that Liam will come back, when the time is right – when Zayn’s slipping into destructive thoughts again or when he’s decided to give it all up – but part of him isn’t sure Liam’s ever coming back._

_Hearing the news from Harry is helpful, sure, to know that he’s not alone in this. But the word _visions_ is ringing in Zayn’s head, and he knows that’s not what he’s seen. It’s more physical than that with Liam. It’s not a hallucination, no matter how many times he’s doubted that over the past few weeks. But somewhere inside, Zayn knows it’s not just his grieving mind playing tricks on him, conjuring Liam up to fill the empty hole in his chest and his heart and his bed. He doesn’t expect Harry to understand that, though, since he hasn’t seen the Liam that Zayn sees. _

_“But they’re not real, right?” Zayn says after a while._

_It’s stupid of him to ask, because he knows he’s just going to get an answer he won’t like. But maybe hearing Harry say it will finally wrench him out of this fantasy he’s been living in, where Liam still visits him, still gives him that “I’m right here, it’s ok” smile and asks him about his day._

_“That’s what this article is saying,” Harry says, “but then I kept reading. There’s this study in the US where they interviewed 2,000 people who had been contacted by a dead friend or family – that’s a lot of people, Zayn. They call it – “ Zayn hears papers rustling, and can picture Harry roaming around his and Louis’s apartment, his hair wild and his eyes glassy with excitement. Harry’s energy is contagious, even over the phone, and Zayn feels himself waking up more and more with each passing second._

_“ADC,” Harry says finally. “After-Death Communication. I _knew_ it couldn’t just be you – and of course Louis and I couldn’t see Liam, because he didn’t choose to come and visit us. He only chose _you_.”_

_Zayn feels like crying all of a sudden, which isn’t really out of the ordinary for him lately, but he’s overcome with how grateful he is to Harry for taking him seriously. He knows Harry won’t have told Louis about this – Louis’s away for the weekend on a theatre camp with his students, hence why Harry’s up at this ungodly hour – but Harry cares enough about Zayn, and gave him enough credit to look into this. He didn’t dismiss Zayn’s encounters with Liam as a product of his grief or lack of sleep._

_“Haz,” Zayn croaks._

_“I know, I know, I’m sorry for waking you. I just thought –“_

_“No,” Zayn says quickly. “Thank you. I – thank you for believing me,” he says._

_“Of course,” Harry says, and there’s a mild tone of affront in his voice. Zayn knows it’s because Harry hates to think that people doubt him. Zayn didn’t, really, but to have Harry here, on the phone, telling him he’s not crazy, is something Zayn could never have asked for._

_“I told you I believed you from the start, Zee.”_

_“I know, Haz,” Zayn says. “Should I come over? You can show me some of this stuff and we can talk about it.”_

_“No, you go back to sleep, I can come over tomorrow with some notes.”_

_“I’m already awake,” Zayn says, and it’s true. His eyes still feel a little heavy and he could use a strong cup of coffee, but he knows it’s no use trying to go back to sleep now. Not with this new knowledge about Liam buzzing in his mind._

_“Ok,” Harry says, and he sounds excited._

_Zayn thinks for a second that it’s vaguely perverse, the two of them getting so worked up about the fact that Liam’s dead but can still visit Zayn, but he dismisses it quickly. There’s no point thinking like that; Liam _can_ visit Zayn, and it’s probably better he knows as much about it as he possibly can._

_//_

_It’s almost 4am by the time Zayn gets to Harry’s. Being a Saturday morning, there’s a strange tension between noise and quiet – there are still a few stragglers from Friday night parties roaming the streets in skimpy attire, calling to each other across the street or talking loudly into their phones. But away from the strips of bars and nightclubs, everything is eerily still and quiet, the still-dark night heavy with the possibility of Saturday morning. It’s not like the deadly silence of weeknights or the lazy, humming quiet of Sunday afternoons, but expectant, like the streets are waiting to be filled with morning joggers and people having breakfast or rushing to meet friends. Like something’s waiting to happen, just out of sight._

_Harry’s making a pot of coffee when Zayn walks into his and Louis’s apartment, and, as Zayn had guessed, there are books and pages of notes everywhere in the small living room. Harry’s pulled his hair back into a bun, probably after having it fall in his face too many times while he was trying to read. He looks tired but alert, his eyes slightly sunken but bright with energy._

_“Hey,” Harry says, his voice slightly hoarse from lack of sleep._

_“Hey,” says Zayn, dropping his keys on the side table and shrugging off his jacket. Harry always has the heat cranked up to the maximum when Louis isn’t around to complain – he feels the cold like no one else Zayn’s ever known._

_Harry silently hands him a mug of strong, bitter smelling coffee and gestures vaguely to the sofa, rustling around in some papers before pulling out a sheet and sitting down next to Zayn._

_“So, this ABC thing,” Zayn says after taking a sip of his coffee. It burns his tongue, but the sensation shocks some life into him. He still feels like this might be a dream, that he’ll wake up tomorrow with no further answers about why Liam keeps showing up in their apartment despite the fact that he’s dead._

_“ADC,” Harry corrects, showing him the piece of paper he’d picked up. “After Death Communication.”_

_“Right,” Zayn says, furrowing his brow as he leans over the notes written in Harry’s small but legible scrawl. He should’ve brought his glasses; most of the time he doesn’t need them, but when he spends hours awake at night reading, or marking student papers, his eyes get sore and fuzzy, so he’d started wearing glasses a few years ago._

_“Here,” Harry says, handing him a pair of reading glasses that must be Louis’s from the coffee table. Zayn slips them on – they’re a little strong for him, but it’s easier to read Harry’s notes with the help of the prescription._

__Most ADC occur between blood relatives – but also often occur between S/O’s. Confirms soul-cluster group concept ??_ _

_Zayn looks up at Harry, bewildered._

_“What does that mean, ‘soul-cluster group concept’?” Zayn asks. Harry grabs his laptop and angles the screen towards Zayn so he can read off it._

__Within a spirit soul family there are many spirit souls who are soulmates, and not just in the term of male and female, romantic love as you experience on earth, but soulmates of the heart who have shared different lifetimes together as perhaps friends, or brothers or some form of very close connection._ _

_Zayn’s throat feels tight. He swallows thickly, and reads the next paragraph that Harry’s highlighted with his mouse on the screen._

_He tries not to think about how the world seemed smaller when he met Liam, how everything felt less overwhelming, safer. He tries not to think about the fact that he only knew Liam for four years and it felt like four lifetimes._

_He keeps reading._

__There are many tests wrapped in the package of love. Mixed into those lives where we have had a long and happy life with a soulmate are those lives where we have destroyed the relationship or been devastated by the actions of our soulmate toward us, or the relationship has ended in circumstances beyond our control._ _

_“See?” Harry says, and Zayn thinks he does._

_He thinks he knew, all along, that he and Liam had known each other before. When they met, it felt like he’d known Liam all his life. They discovered after they’d been dating for about a year that they’d both gone to the same Chris Brown concert at nineteen, that both their sisters went on the same trip to France when they were thirteen. There were just certain people, Zayn had realised, that belonged in your life, who it seemed like you’d always known no matter how briefly their paths intersected with yours. Liam was one of them._

_“I knew you guys had a different connection,” Harry’s saying excitedly, scrolling through more websites and pages of testimonials, but Zayn’s stopped paying attention. He thinks he’s learned all he needs to know, and he’s not sure it’s helped him at all._

_He and Liam were supposed to be together, they’d been connected before they even knew each other. But Liam’s gone. He’d come into Zayn’s life for a moment, barely the blink of an eye, and now he’s gone._

_Liam’s gone, and Zayn’s sat here with Harry at four in the morning talking about soulmates and the fact that he’s lost his._

_“Hey,” Harry says, and Zayn looks up at him. “You ok?”_

_Zayn wants to laugh, because it’s such a ridiculous question. He’s not sure he knows what ‘ok’ even means anymore, all he knows is that he’s not. But instead of laughing he starts crying, folds his body in towards Harry’s and lets Harry put his arms around him and hold Zayn like he’s a child._

_“None of this changes the fact that he’s gone,” Zayn chokes out, feeling the familiar tightness in his chest when he thinks about the physical absence that Liam’s left. Like there had been a garden in Zayn’s heart before, but someone had gone in and ripped out all the plants and now nothing could grow; there was nothing but bare earth._

_“I know,” Harry says, rubbing circles on Zayn’s back. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you this. I thought it would help but I –“_

_“It’s ok,” Zayn breathes, his tears hot and salty on his tongue. He’s not sure if he’s saying it to Harry or to himself. He’s still not sure what he means by ok._

_“It’s ok. I had him for a while. I had him, that has to be enough.”_

_//_

__May 23rd 2022_ _

_It feels wrong, to Zayn, for the seasons to change. It feels wrong that the days are getting warmer and it’s still light when Zayn walks home from the tube station after work, that the blossom trees in the park down the street from his and Liam’s flat are fluffy and pink like meringues. It feels like Zayn’s stuck in February, in the freezing rain that blew in through the broken windshield the night of the crash, waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night and wearing long coats to school while the students traipse through his classroom in shorts._

_Still, even for May, it’s an unusually warm evening when Zayn walks into his flat and sees Liam sitting at the kitchen table, talking softly to Loki and Rhino. It takes him a few moments to remember that it’s not really Liam, just a fragment of him that’s left behind. A remnant of Zayn’s memory, or a figment of his imagination._

_It’s such a familiar sight, Liam at the table, the dogs drawn to him (even when they can’t see him), turning towards Zayn when he opens the door with a smile that lights up the room, that sends birds flapping from their roosts in Zayn’s chest, leaving him feeling weightless._

_“Hey,” Liam says, just like he always used to, standing up and crossing the room towards Zayn._

_Zayn wants to fall into his arms like he would’ve when Liam was alive, breathe in his scent of honey and musk and whatever he was cooking for dinner, feel Liam put his warm palms underneath Zayn’s shirt and pull their bodies together until their breath was in sync._

_But there’s a wall between them now, and Liam stops a few paces short of where Zayn’s standing, his hands dangling uselessly at his sides._

_“Hey,” Zayn says, because it’s what he’s used to. It feels foreign on his tongue, though._

_“I think the dogs need to go out,” Liam says, and Zayn nods, going over to take Loki’s and Rhino’s collars in each hand, leading them outside and down the stairs of their apartment block. His and Liam’s flat is on the second floor, and although he can’t hear Liam’s footsteps on the stairs, Zayn knows that he’s following them._

_He lets the dogs go once they’re out the front of the building, and glances over at Liam who’s watching Loki and Rhino sniff around the garden._

_He thinks about all the things he and Liam used to do together that he never appreciated while Liam was alive – taking the dogs out to pee, washing the dishes together, brushing their teeth before bed, going to the Laundromat. Stupid, simple things that Zayn misses more than he ever knew it was possible to miss something._

_He looks at Liam’s figure in the fading light and wishes he’d told him how much he loved him every minute of every day, when he had the chance. He wishes he wasn’t such a fucking cliché._

_“Sorry it took me so long to come back,” Liam said, and Zayn shakes his head._

_“Don’t be sorry. I’m glad you’re here.”_

_“I just – I freaked out after seeing Haz and Lou. They couldn’t see me, and it made me feel – made me feel like I wasn’t meant to be there. Like I shouldn’t be able to cross over like I can.”_

_Zayn nods, and wishes he’d brought a cigarette down with him because he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He can only think about linking his fingers through Liam’s._

_“I talked to Harry about the whole thing. He did some research,” Zayn says, and watches a smile creep onto Liam’s face. He and Liam and Niall (and Louis, sometimes even worse than the others) joked about Harry, his enthusiasm for everything, the way he needed to know the answer to every question as soon as it was asked._

_“Sounds like our Haz,” says Liam, and he sounds fond, but sad._

_“Apparently it’s quite common. Not quite – not quite the way it happens for us, but it does happen to other people. Something to do with…..our souls. Being connected.”_

_Suddenly Zayn thinks it sounds stupid out loud, saying the things he and Harry had read, about soulmates. It makes sense in Zayn’s head, when he looks at Liam now with his face half-lit from the porch light of their building, his hands in his pockets, looking so real. But the words don’t seem to encompass what he felt with Liam; more than a connection, more than a lover. He guesses that’s what the idea of soulmates is, he just wishes there was a better word for it. He wishes there was a word for the way Liam drank his coffee while scrolling through the news on his phone in the morning, for the way he could catch Zayn’s eye across a busy room and immediately know that Zayn was bored and wanted to go home. He wishes there was a word for the way that he feels, right now, standing on the grass outside his building with Liam, or a ghost of Liam, or a fabrication of Liam made out of all of Zayn’s memories. Like he’s so full he could burst._

_Like he could die._

_Zayn tries to read Liam’s expression, but he’s looking over at Rhino and Loki, away from Zayn, and the only hint of emotion is a muscle in his jaw clenching and unclenching. It’s so Liam, Zayn thinks, and it’s somewhat comforting to think he can still read Liam, even when he’s not entirely here._

_Even when he’s dead._

_He used to clench his jaw when he was trying not to cry, and Zayn has to bite his cheek to keep himself from doing the same thing._

_“Li –“_

_“I hate this, Zayn. Part of me wants to stop coming back. I hate it so much, seeing you and not being able to see you properly. Or you to see me properly, I don’t even know. Not being able to touch you. Forgetting that this isn’t real, none of this is real and I’m not actually here, I’m somewhere else, fucking _dead_.”_

_The word rings in Zayn’s head and his eyes blur with tears. He stares hard at the grass, and wills Liam to stay._

_“But there has to be a reason for this, Liam,” Zayn manages eventually, trying to keep his voice steady. He’s terrified of Liam leaving. Terrified he won’t come back._

_“You don’t just show up here, right? You can control when you come and go?” He looks up at Liam, who’s stopped staring at the dogs and is looking fiercely at Zayn, his eyes like twin bonfires that threaten to engulf Zayn, swallow him whole. Zayn almost wishes they would._

_“I – sort of,” Liam says, and he sounds confused. “I knew I didn’t want to come back for a while after seeing Harry and Lou. Then the pull got too strong today, and I – I was back here. And it works the other way too. When I’m here, I can feel this pull from the other side, and once I’ve been here for a while I can’t resist it anymore.”_

_“But you could – you could practice, right?” Zayn feels frantic. He feels like this can’t be it, just Liam’s ghost or his presence or whatever, here one minute and gone the next. There has to be some way to control it. To stop Liam going back to the other side._

_“You could practice holding on, practice resisting it?”_

_Liam gives Zayn the look he always used to give him when Zayn would suggest something ridiculous, like leaving London and buying a bed and breakfast in the countryside, or packing up and going backpacking around Australia, on nights when he was fed up with school and the city and his life. Like Liam could sympathise, but he was too sensible and logical to think that anything like that could ever work out._

_Like trying to stay alive when he’s been dead for three months is going to work out._

_“Sure. I can try,” Liam says, like Zayn’s a child who can’t handle the truth. Zayn whistles for the dogs, who come bounding over, and heads back inside their building._

_“It’s ok,” he tells Liam. “You’re here for now, and it’s enough.”_

_Maybe if he says it often enough, Zayn thinks childishly, it will come true._

_//_

_As much as Liam seems dubious about being able to control when he comes and goes, he starts turning up at more and more opportune moments. He’s in the bathroom when Zayn gets out of the shower on the night of Harry’s first performance with his new dance troupe, and comes along to the theatre to watch the show. Louis looks disbelievingly between Zayn and Harry as they relay messages to and from Liam about how great Harry looked, how much Harry misses Liam. Niall seems doubtful at first, too, until Liam shows up for the unveiling of Niall’s first solo architecture project with his own company._

_Zayn feels like he becomes someone else when Liam is around, someone who accepts the fact that a person’s spirit can come back from the dead and walk and talk and compliment his friends on their achievements from beyond the grave. Zayn becomes someone who tells Niall that Liam thinks his project looks incredible, that he’d buy the house if he could afford it, and ask him if he does mate’s rates. As if relaying messages from the man standing next to him, who is invisible, dead air, to everyone else but Zayn, is a completely normal and acceptable thing to do._

_And so, after a while, it does become normal. It becomes normal for Niall to ask Zayn if he’s seen Liam recently, for Zayn to tell Niall that Liam was in their living room last week, trying to make the dogs calm down because they could sense him but not see him. He tells Niall that he’d put on the latest Marvel instalment that came out last month because Liam was desperate to see it, and he’d managed to stay for the whole film._

_It becomes normal for Zayn to walk into the kitchen on a Saturday morning, prepared to spend the day marking his students’ essays on Macbeth, and see Liam perched on the kitchen counter, swinging his feet like a little kid and grinning when he sees Zayn. So they spend the day at the park instead, watching families set up picnics and swim as the day warms up, watching them fight and make up, always avoiding the one topic of conversation neither of them wants to bring up – the plain fact that Liam is dead. The fact that this is what they wanted, both of them – kids, and a life together, and picnics and swimming lessons and football on Saturdays, and now they’ll never have it._

_So they ignore the enormous gulf of silence around the future, and focus on the present instead. Liam sits on the counter in the kitchen and instructs Zayn on how to prepare all the meals Liam used to cook for him; Zayn tells Liam about how one of his most talented students is applying for a scholarship to uni and Zayn’s got to write her a recommendation, and they talk about how fast their students have grown up._

_“I always hated when you do that,” Liam says one day, while he’s watching Zayn make a cup of tea. Zayn looks up at him, frowning._

_“Do what?”_

_“Leave the teabag on the counter. You do it every, single, time, and every time I’d have to be the one to put it in the bin. It’s like two steps further.”_

_Zayn laughs, putting the teabag in the bin and giving Liam a deliberate look over his shoulder. He leans his hip against the counter, looking at Liam next to the stove and trying to find some kind of imperfection, a blur around his edges, anything to tell Zayn he’s not real. He can’t see any._

_“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Zayn asks._

_“There are a lot of things I didn’t tell you,” Liam says slyly._

_“Like what?” Zayn demands. He wants to know, partly because he’s curious to see himself through Liam’s eyes, but partly because he feels a desperate need to hear everything Liam meant to say, and to tell him everything Zayn never said, while they still have time._

_They have time, he tells himself._

_“Like, I hate the way you chew with your mouth open sometimes,” Liam is saying, “when you’re not thinking.” Zayn wrinkles his nose._

_“Do not,” he says. “Anyway, you make the _loudest_ slurping sounds when you’re drinking your coffee.” Liam snorts._

_“That’s nothing – you haven’t seen you when you’re tired – you have to disagree about every little thing, even when it doesn’t even make sense. I only put up with it cos it was so cute when you got all sleepy and grumpy and I had to put you to bed like a toddler.”_

_Liam’s grinning at him, in that way that makes Zayn’s chest ache, because no one knows Zayn like Liam does, not even Zayn himself._

_“Well you always threw things out before I got the chance to eat them,” Zayn huffs, secretly enjoying this game they’re playing. Anything that means he gets to relive his memories with Liam, even the bad ones._

_“That’s because you left food in the fridge for _weeks_!” Liam groans. “Rice lasts three days and you’d complain when I threw out your biryani after two weeks.”_

_“You always put too much coriander in your curries,” Zayn says suddenly, the memory occurring to him on the spot. He’s never been overly fond of coriander, though Liam had a heavy hand with it. Zayn never had the heart to tell him because of how much effort Liam put into cooking, and how much he wanted Zayn to enjoy it._

_“To tell you the truth, your curries were always too spicy for me,” Liam says, and Zayn giggles._

_“Why didn’t you say anything?”_

_“I knew you liked them like that, and I couldn’t ask you to make two curries with one that was milder for me. I thought I’d get used to it, to be honest, but…” He trails off, and Zayn knows why._

_They don’t talk about the fact that everything they shared is now past tense. Liam thought he’d develop a tolerance for spice, but he didn’t before he died. Zayn thought maybe one day the time would be right to ask Liam to use a little less coriander in his cooking, but he never did before Liam died._

_Neither of them say this out loud, though, preferring to pretend that they still have time. That they’ll get used to each other’s tastes. That there’s time to tell each other the truth._

_They don’t talk about the fact that it’s almost been six months since the accident, and that Liam would be turning 29 in a few weeks if he was still alive. Zayn keeps telling himself it’s enough that he still gets to see Liam every couple of weeks, sometimes more often._

_But Liam’s still dead, and Zayn goes to bed alone._

_//_

__"You don’t ever forget someone, do you?__  
They are just buried in the deepest, darkest part of you,  
Occasionally making a guest appearance to pinch you."   
Unknown 

__August 12th 2022_ _

_Zayn wakes up the morning of their would-be-five year anniversary, and Liam’s still dead._

_He half-expects Liam to be there in the bedroom, or waiting on the edge of the bath when Zayn gets out of the shower on the morning of their anniversary. He expects to feel Liam’s presence over his shoulder while he makes a cup of tea he doesn’t really feel like drinking. He’s not sure whether it’s because he thinks Liam’s ghost is going to appear, or because he just really, really wishes Liam, the real Liam, was still here. He thinks it’s probably both._

_The weight of it, the grief, always catches Zayn off guard. He’s not prepared for the way it crashes into him in moments like this – taking the tea bag out of the mug and putting it on the counter, something Liam used to tell him off for every time. Numbly, almost on autopilot, Zayn picks up the tea bag and transfers it to the rubbish bin, as if Liam was really here to scold him._

_But he’s not._

_Around lunchtime, Zayn’s phone rings. He’s been lying in bed all morning staring at the ceiling like the fucking cliché he is, thinking about what he’d be doing if Liam was still alive. Liam would have made him breakfast in bed, and they would have given each other gifts like they did every year – it had to be something handmade, under 20 quid, a rule they’d made when they were young and struggling for money._

_He was still young, Zayn reminds himself. Liam was still young._

_It’s Niall on the phone. Zayn almost doesn’t answer, but he knows if he doesn’t, Niall will worry and show up at Zayn’s door anyway. So he swipes his thumb across the screen and prepares to fake being fine. He’s used to it by now, anyway._

_“Hey Zee,” Niall says, his voice a little less cheery than usual. Zayn wonders if everything’s ok. He’ll be glad to be able to focus on someone other than himself._

_“Hey man,” Zayn says. “What’s up?” He tries to mask the emotion in his voice as best he can; he doesn’t want Niall to sense that anything’s wrong._

_“Nothing much. Was just calling to see what you’re up to. If you wanted me to….come round.”_

_The penny drops for Zayn at that moment. Of course Niall remembered their anniversary, and would call to make sure Zayn was ok, to see if he needed company. It unravels something in Zayn, something he’s been holding together until now, and before he knows it he’s choking on tears._

_“I….I’m not doing anything,” Zayn manages, and hears Niall’s breath hitch over the phone._

_It’s amazing how much they can communicate without saying anything, Zayn thinks, then remembers how Liam would look at him from across the dinner table and be able to say a thousand words in one glance. How he would know when Zayn was tired, upset, or excited about something just by looking at him. How wrapping his arms around Zayn’s waist from behind meant ‘sorry’, rolling away from him in the middle of the night meant he was upset about something, a kiss on the cheek for no reason meant he was happy. Stupid, simple things that Zayn misses so much he can barely breathe._

_//_

_Niall climbs into bed with Zayn when he arrives, and it reminds Zayn of the week after the accident, sleeping at Niall’s and listening to him cry himself to sleep at night. He wants to tell Niall about it, tell him he knew how upset he was and say he’s sorry that he didn’t know what to say._

_But Zayn still doesn’t know what to say. He still feels like there’s a wall between him and his friends, him and the rest of the world, a wall of grief that’s keeping everyone at bay because they don’t know how to act around him, and Zayn doesn’t know how to act around them._

_“Thanks for coming,” is all Zayn can think to say. He rolls over to face Niall, and notices his friend’s blue eyes are a little bloodshot._

_“S’nothing, Zee,” Niall says roughly. “He hasn’t…..hasn’t showed up?” Zayn knows who he means, and shakes his head, his face hot against the pillow._

_“Maybe it’s – maybe it’s over,” Zayn says, his voice trembling a little as he puts words to the thought that’s been haunting him for the last few hours. He knows, somewhere in the back of his mind, that this thing with Liam, this soulmate bond or apparition or hallucination, or whatever the hell it is, can only be temporary. Liam needs to move on to the other side, or whatever there is after the limbo that he’s currently stuck in. And as much as he’s loathe to admit it, Zayn knows he needs to move on as well. He needs to stop looking forward to seeing the trace of Liam that’s left behind like it’s the only thing that matters to him anymore. Not when Niall, and the rest of his friends, and his students and his family, are right in front of him._

_“Maybe,” Niall says, his voice soft. “Maybe he just knew it’d be too hard. Not being able to – t’do what you normally do, y’know?” Zayn knows, swallowing hard._

_“We usually went to the obstacle course where we went on that teacher’s retreat. Cos it’s like…..where we…..first realised we liked each other,” Zayn says, his voice thick. Niall nods._

_“I remember. We all thought it was weird that you wanted to go back to the place where you had to spend a week with people from work.” Zayn huffs out a laugh._

_“I thought it was weird too, the first time he suggested it. Then we did it and, I dunno, it just felt right.”_

_Both of them pause. Zayn feels like he hasn’t taken a breath in years._

_“Everything felt right with him,” Zayn says in a small voice._

_He feels everything well up inside him until he can’t push it back down, until it pours out of his mouth and he’s telling Niall everything, about their second ‘date’, when they’d both been drinking at Liam’s flat, then one of them had the idea to go to the playground by his house and they’d had a competition to see who could swing the highest. About their third anniversary, when the obstacle course had been booked for a school trip. Liam had suggested mini golf instead, and Zayn had a tantrum when Liam kept beating him. Or Liam’s birthday last year, when Liam had insisted he didn’t want to do anything, so Zayn had organised for his track team to surprise him with a cake and a horribly out of tune, horribly public rendition of ‘happy birthday.’_

_He and Niall talk about what they want to do for Liam’s birthday in a couple of weeks, when he would have been turning 29. Zayn doesn’t think he can bear to talk about it, he can’t even bear thinking about how young Liam was, and how he should still be here. How it should be Liam lying next to Zayn, not Niall, insisting he doesn’t want presents or anything special, just dinner with Zayn and the dogs._

_But he’s gone._

_He’s gone, so they decide (Niall decides) that they’ll have dinner somewhere, the four of them, to remember Liam and celebrate his life. It sounds ridiculous to Zayn, but he agrees because Niall seems so eager, and he’s too tired out from letting out all his pent up emotion to argue. Niall insists on staying the night, and even though it’s not Liam lying next to him as he tries to fall asleep, Zayn thinks maybe it’s better than sleeping alone._

_//_

__August 29th 2022_ _

_It’s a beautiful, warm day on the day Liam should have turned twenty-nine, like it always is on his birthday. It’s the end of summer, where the days usually turn cooler and the nights seem a little bit longer. There’s a sense of finality about the end of August – whatever feeling of familiarity and calm that had built up over summer would come to an end with the start of the new school year in a couple of days. Zayn and Liam’s routine of lazy mornings in bed, nights staying up late drinking wine on the balcony while it was still warm enough, and driving out of the city mid-week would soon turn into early mornings and catching the tube home in the dark at 4pm, weekends of marking and the occasional dinner party at a friend’s house when everyone wasn’t too busy._

_Liam’s birthday had always seemed like the last proper day of summer to Zayn; usually, they made a picnic the night before and had breakfast in the park, then spent the day sunbathing and swimming, going to Liam’s parents for dinner or to their favourite restaurant. Zayn had always thought it was fitting, for someone who positively radiated sunshine from his entire being, to have the best weather in the whole month of August for his birthday._

_Today, though, he wishes it would rain._

_Niall offers him a ride to Harry and Louis’s for the dinner party they’re having for Liam, which Zayn still isn’t sure is a good idea. He hasn’t seen Liam in over a week; he’d showed up a few days after their anniversary, apologising for not being there on the day, and Zayn doesn’t think he’ll show up tonight. But he has to put on a brave face for his friends, especially Niall, who came up with the whole idea, so he’s ready at exactly 6:30pm when he gets a text from Niall saying he’s downstairs. Zayn takes one last look at the apartment to make sure Liam isn’t standing in the kitchen or over by the sofa, before taking his keys and going downstairs to meet Niall._

_They’re early, so Harry and Louis are arguing about whether they have enough crackers set out (“We don’t want people to be full before dinner Harry”, “Yeah, but what if someone doesn’t want lamb so they need to fill up on crackers?”)_

_Zayn doesn’t know why it matters; the only guests are he and Niall, and he’s not sure he’s got the stomach to eat much anyway. Both Harry and Louis shut up when he and Niall walk in, and immediately come over to hug them both._

_“How are you doing?” Harry asks softly in Zayn’s ear when he pulls him close, hand going to the back of Zayn’s head. Zayn feels his throat tighten at the physical closeness; he’s forgotten what it’s like to be held by someone regularly, how it feels to disappear in someone’s arms. He pulls back reluctantly and looks into Harry’s concerned eyes._

_“Fine,” he says, on autopilot._

_“Have you seen him today?” Harry asks while Niall and Louis go to the kitchen to get drinks. Zayn shakes his head._

_“I didn’t really expect to. He’ll probably be here tomorrow or the day after,” he says, only half-believing it himself. Harry nods._

_“I’m sure he will be,” Harry says. “Come get a drink. Are you hungry? We’ve got crackers.”_

_“Why do you have so many crackers?” Zayn asks as he follows Harry into the kitchen. “It’s just me and Niall. I know Nialler eats a lot, but –“_

_Harry stops short so suddenly that Zayn almost walks into him. Harry looks like he’s trembling slightly, like his whole being is vibrating. He’s staring at Louis like if his eyes could shoot lasers, they’d be pointed straight at Louis._

_“You told me you’d tell him,” Harry says, his voice dangerously low._

_Zayn suddenly feels too warm in Louis and Harry’s kitchen; there’s something going on that he doesn’t know about, and it sends anxiety shooting through him like knives under his skin, making him sweat and shiver at the same time. He watches Louis shift uncomfortably, and wills it to be something like “I forgot to tell Zayn we can’t cook so all we’re serving is crackers.”_

_“I guess I forgot,” Louis says, and Zayn feels himself grinding his teeth. He wills himself to stop._

_“Forgot to tell me what?” he says. Harry turns to face Zayn with pleading eyes._

_“Zayn, I’m so sorry, Louis said he’d tell you because it was all his idea, but he invited –“_

_The doorbell rings._

_“That’ll be them,” Louis says, darting across the kitchen and into the hallway to get the door. Zayn whips around to see just who it is that Louis decided to invite to his dead boyfriend’s would-be birthday party, and almost passes out on Harry and Louis’s kitchen floor._

_It’s Liam’s family. Not just his mum and dad, but his sisters too. Not just Nicola, but Ruth. Standing in the living room, talking to Louis like they belong here. Like they know what Liam liked to do on his birthday, like they knew what he wanted every year (which wasn’t the books and underwear they always sent Liam, but the playlists Zayn made for him, the football jersey of his favourite team member, and always, always, daffodils)._

_During therapy, Zayn had talked about the blame he still harboured towards Ruth. It was meant to help him let go, to help him realise that no one was at fault, it was all a horrific accident, and that there was nothing anyone could have done to stop it. But Zayn had never quite come to terms with it; he still felt like it could have been stopped somehow. If Ruth hadn’t called Liam crying that night, they would never have got in the car. If Zayn had told Liam to put his seatbelt on, he wouldn’t have hit his head so hard against the wheel. If Zayn had yelled out to Liam sooner about the red light, he could have hit the brakes and softened the impact._

_Zayn knows that part of the reason he still blames Ruth so much is because it means he doesn’t have to blame himself as much, for being in the car and not telling Liam to wear a seatbelt, not telling him to slow down, not telling him to brake earlier, not being the one who never made it out of the hospital. But it doesn’t stop him from curling his hands into fists and digging his nails into his palms right now, feeling himself sway on his feet for a few seconds before he feels Harry’s hand on his shoulder._

_“Zayn, I’m sorry. I thought he would have told you. He just thought – he was their son, Zee. And their brother. They, of all people, know what you’re going through.”_

_Zayn closes his eyes, feeling the kitchen shift around him. Harry’s right, Zayn knows he is, but it doesn’t stop blind anger washing over him. Anger towards Ruth, anger towards Louis, for not asking him if it was ok to invite them, anger towards himself, for not being able to let go of this, and most of all, anger towards Liam for leaving him, for not being here on his own fucking birthday and for making Zayn go through this, go through everything, alone._

_He draws in a long, trembling breath, and opens his eyes. He’s still in Louis and Harry’s kitchen. Liam’s family are still in the living room. Liam is still dead._

_He breathes out, and tries to let go of all of his anger, feeling some of the tension leave his body. There’s nothing he can do that will bring Liam back; none of his hatred, his grief or his denial will make Liam alive again. So he bites his tongue, takes the glass of wine that Harry offers him, and follows him and Niall into the living room._

_Zayn’s not sure how he makes it through the next couple of hours, though it might have something to do with Harry, who, out of guilt or pity or both, keeps handing him glasses of wine. Zayn listens numbly while everyone swaps stories about Liam – how he broke his ankle when he was twelve and couldn’t understand why he wasn’t allowed to run for two months; how he got his first job as the coach of a girl’s netball team when he was 21 and had to resign after three months because of how distracted the girls were during practice; when he and his family went on holiday to Disneyland and Liam threw up after going on one of the rides. Zayn doesn’t share any of his own stories, just sits and eats what’s put in front of him by Harry, drinks his wine and avoids everyone’s eyes except for Niall’s and Harry’s._

_After dessert, as they’re all sitting out in Louis and Harry’s tiny backyard, still in short sleeves with their sunglasses pushed back on their heads, Harry stands up and proposes a toast._

_“To Liam,” he says. Zayn expects a long-winded, emotional speech, but Harry just swallows, his eyes shining, and says, “we miss you, mate.”_

_Zayn stares hard at his shoes and tries hard not to think about all the things he misses about Liam. He could write a book, he thinks, about all the things he’d give in the world to have Liam here, right now, blushing from the attention and smiling shyly as everyone clinks glasses._

_All of a sudden he can’t stand it anymore – the smiles, the laughter, Liam’s mum sitting with her arm around Louis, and Ruth, sitting next to her dad and touching her wine glass to his. Zayn feels like he can’t breathe, like there’s not enough air in the world to fill his lungs right now._

_He stands up shakily, walking inside and shutting himself in the bathroom. He steadies himself with his hands on the counter and stares at the mirror, willing, with all his might, for Liam to appear behind him and tell him it’s okay._

_But this is Harry and Louis’s flat, not Zayn’s. The towels are white instead of blue, and the shower’s on the wrong side. Liam isn’t here to tell Zayn what to do or what to say, to talk him down, wrap him up in his arms and put his breath back in his chest. Zayn hangs his head and lets himself cry, overwhelmed with the realisation, the one that keeps hitting him over and over again, that he’ll never touch Liam again. He can see him, still talk to him, still watch the way his face changes when he smiles and how he moves his hands when he talks, but he can never touch his skin when he’s just woken up, or run his fingers through his hair right after he’s washed it._

_He can’t bear it, physically, doesn’t understand how the grief can feel this big and still keep on growing inside his chest until he feels like he’s going to burst, until he wishes he could._

_He jolts when there’s a knock on the door, and quickly wipes his face._

_“Just a sec,” he says, wishing his voice didn’t sound so far away in his own ears._

_“Zayn, I know it’s you. I just want to talk.”_

_It’s Louis. The last person Zayn wants to talk to right now, except for maybe Ruth._

_“Fuck off,” Zayn says, teeth gritted._

_“Not a chance, mate. Open up,” Louis says._

_Zayn rolls his eyes. If there’s one thing he knows about Louis, it’s that he won’t back down. It’s something both of them have in common, and it’s the cause of most of their fights. They’re both stubborn and hard-headed, too proud to admit when they’re wrong and too headstrong to back down from a fight. Zayn sighs and goes to open the door, still unable to meet Louis’s eyes when he lets him in._

_“I’m sorry, Zee. I really am. I should’ve told you, but I knew you’d make a big deal –“_

_“A big deal?” Zayn snarls. He’s not going to sit here while Louis tells him he’s over-reacting. “You fucking invited his family without asking me, without giving me _any_ idea that they would be here so that I could prepare, so that I could be ready to see – to see _her_ again.” _

_“It’s not her fault, Zayn. You’re being ridiculous, and actually, you’re being pretty fucking rude if you ask me. You act like you’re the only one who’s lost someone, but that’s their _son_. That’s Ruth’s _brother_ , and he was _my_ best fucking friend.” Zayn can tell from his voice that Louis’s crying, but he still refuses to look at him. _

_“Then why is everyone acting like this is all fucking ok? Like it’s normal to be smiling and laughing at Liam’s birthday when he’s not here, when he’s not fucking coming back,” Zayn says, feeling more tears roll down his cheeks and not caring to stop them._

_“Because we’re not all holding on to the illusion that he’s going to be around as some fucking ghost forever,” Louis snipes, and Zayn could hit him. His hand actually curls into a fist at his side, but he stops himself just in time._

_Finally, he raises his eyes to meet Louis’s, flashing angry blue, and Zayn feels hatred burn in his chest._

_“Fuck you,” he spits._

_“Right, fuck _me_ , the guy who’s actually bothered to see how his parents are doing since they lost their youngest child. Who organised this whole thing and thought to invite his family because maybe, just maybe, they would want to remember their son on his birthday. While you’ve been wallowing in your sadness and your fucking delusion about ‘seeing’ Liam – which, by the way, I wish Harry wouldn’t have encouraged so much because it’s like he actually believes it too – the rest of us have been moving on with our lives and trying to stay positive about the whole thing.” _

_Zayn is too angry to speak. Louis’s words pound in his head as he pushes past him and out of the bathroom, down the hallway and out of Louis and Harry’s front door, not caring that everyone else is still out the back, that Niall drove him here and now he’s going to have to get the bus home._

_He feels physically ill, and he stops on the side of Harry and Louis’s street, his hands on his knees, to retch for a second before straightening up and taking big gulps of air._

_The worst thing is, Zayn knows that in some ways, Louis is right. Zayn has been closed off and selfish, engrossed in trying to keep his memories of Liam alive. He should have checked on Liam’s parents, paid his respects, tried to forgive Ruth, and asked how his friends were coping. But he’s barely keeping his own head above water, struggling to make it through the day, especially recently, when he hasn’t had classes to teach or a reason to even get out of bed._

_But what Louis had said about Zayn’s visions of Liam, about him being deluded and clinging to an illusion, makes Zayn want to turn around and march right back into Louis and Harry’s flat and sock Louis right in the jaw. Zayn spent weeks thinking he was crazy, thinking he must be hallucinating, thinking that the Liam he was seeing wasn’t real. It was only after seeing Liam so many times, after getting reassurance from Harry that he wasn’t losing his mind, that he convinced himself that his conversations with Liam had really happened._

_For Louis to dismiss it just like that hurts Zayn right to his core, makes him sick to his stomach. Harry had believed him, had helped him figure out what was going on, and Niall had come to terms with it as well, so why couldn’t Louis? Zayn knows they’d been best friends since they were kids, so of course it had hit Louis hard, maybe harder than Zayn knew, but then why was he acting as if he was fine, like he’d moved on?_

_Zayn has half a mind to run back and ask Louis all these questions, corner him in the bathroom again and demand answers, but he knows it wouldn’t do any good. The two of them see eye to eye on a lot of things, but not, apparently, on grief._

_Zayn looks around himself, trying to get his bearings, then sees the bus pull into Harry and Louis’s street. Wearily, he waves it down, crossing the road with his hands in his pockets. He knows he’s left an absolute mess behind at Harry and Louis’s, but he doesn’t have the strength to deal with it right now._

_Liam was always Zayn’s strength when he needed it. For the thousandth time, he wishes Liam was here._  
   
// 

__"The week before last, I ran through a red light just to remember_  
What it was like to love you."_  
Beau Taplin, ‘The Red Light’ 

__August 30th 2022_ _

_Zayn spends a sleepless night replaying his conversation with Louis over and over again in his mind, half hoping that Liam will show up so he can talk to him about it, and half hoping he doesn’t. He knows this whole thing where he convinces himself that he can go on living like Liam will just be around to talk to, whenever Zayn needs, has to stop._

_When he sees the grey light of morning wash through his bedroom and he gives up on waiting for Liam to appear, Zayn goes back to Louis and Harry’s._

_Niall and Harry both texted him after he left the night before, asking if he was okay and to make sure he got home safely, but he hasn’t heard from Louis. Zayn’s not surprised, really – whenever the two of them fight, it usually lasts a good week or so before Liam or Harry can convince one of them to apologise, and for them to work it out. But Zayn’s tired, so tired, of being angry. He’s been angry at Ruth for being the reason they got in the car the night of the crash, at Liam for leaving him, at Harry and Louis for still having each other, at Niall for being so collected and capable, and at himself, for falling apart at least three times a day._

_But he’s tired of it, of all the anger boiling his blood and knotting his muscles, and he just wants to talk to one of his best friends, since the person he always used to be able to go to, when he and Louis were fighting, isn’t here anymore._

_It’s almost rudely early to be showing up at Louis and Harry’s unannounced, Zayn realises, so he stops at Starbucks on the way for three coffees and three croissants, then sends Harry a quick text to ask if it’s ok to come over, adding that he has breakfast. Harry, of course, tells him to come round whenever, and Zayn is grateful that even if Louis is ready to knock Zayn’s teeth out when he gets there, he’ll have Harry as a buffer._

_He’s tried to think of what he should say to Louis, knowing he needs to apologise, but also hesitant to let Louis off the hook completely. He’s hoping Harry’s talked some sense into him this morning, and that Louis is ready to meet him halfway._

_With coffee and pastries in hand, his best defence against the small but deadly hurricane of anger that’s about to greet him, he rings Harry and Louis’s doorbell, and waits._

_Louis answers in his socks, and he looks like he’s had about as much sleep as Zayn has – which is precisely none. He raises an eyebrow at Zayn by way of a greeting, which Zayn accept gratefully – it’s better than a snarky comment or outright shutting the door in Zayn’s face._

_“Breakfast?” Zayn offers weakly, and Louis nods, stepping aside to let Zayn into their apartment. It smells like lemon detergent and cigarettes – Zayn figures Louis’s been chain smoking since last night, and it makes his fingers itch for one. He hears Harry in the kitchen, and it’s something he misses about Liam so much, all the tiny sounds and smells he brought into their apartment that made it _home_. It wasn’t just his voice or his singing, but the way his footsteps sounded in the hallway, the way he shut cupboards and drawers so carefully and softly you could barely hear it. The house feels so empty without him and god, Zayn feels like he’s going to cry already and he hasn’t even said two words to Louis. _

_“Haz, Zayn’s here,” Louis calls, sitting down at the dining table and eyeing the coffee and pastries Zayn sets down._

_“Croissants, and a cappuccino,” Zayn offers, feeling like Louis is a wild animal he’s trying to placate with a juicy piece of meat. Louis takes the offer, but avoids Zayn’s eye as Harry comes up behind Zayn and kisses the top of his head._

_“Thanks for breakfast, Zee,” he says. “Sorry if Lou’s forgotten his manners, it’s been a rough night.”_

_Louis looks daggers at Harry, who merely scoops up his coffee and pastry, and goes into the bedroom. “I’ll be in here if you need me,” he calls, and then Louis and Zayn are alone._

_Sighing, Zayn sits down and pulls his coffee over to him. He doesn’t even know where to start, but then Louis starts talking._

_“I’m sorry I was an asshole last night,” he says, and Zayn is so taken aback at how quickly Louis’s owned up, that he looks up and meets Louis’s eyes._

_They’re shining bright blue, like icebergs, and something drops in Zayn’s stomach. This is one of his best friends, the only other person who had wanted to talk to the new teacher when he’d started at school, both of them a little unorthodox in the staffroom, sticking out in their skinny jeans and scruffy hair. The person who Zayn went to when he found out one of his students was being bullied, when he caught one cheating on their final English exam, when he was delirious from not enough sleep and too many Othello papers, who let him nap in his office for an hour then fed him coffee and sandwiches until he felt human again._

_This is _Louis_ , for Christ’s sake, and Zayn can’t remember when he turned his best friend into such a demon in his mind. _

_“Lou, I –“_

_“No, let me finish. I went too far – I was angry, I feel like I’ve been angry 24/7 for the last six months, and it’s because I haven’t let myself feel sad. I cried at the funeral but that was it, I haven’t let myself since then.”_

_Louis’s voice is a thin line, like he’s on the verge of completely letting go._

_“I didn’t understand why you wanted to be left alone, why you shut us out, why you’d let yourself break down at work or in public. But – I just bottled all that up and let it out as anger instead of getting upset, and I think – I think that made it worse. And so last night, I shouldn’t have said those things. I should have told you that I invited Ruth. I just – I really felt like it was the right thing to do, and Harry agreed, I just – I knew you’d be so angry, and then you wouldn’t come, and I knew how important it was for you to be there. Even if you didn’t think it was important.”_

_Zayn feels a huge, hot lump in his throat, like he’s swallowed a burning coal, and he feels like if he speaks that nothing is going to come out except sobs. But he tries to swallow around it, tries to make the words that he wants to say come out the right way._

_“Thank you,” he manages. Then he breaths out a rattling sigh and feels the need to sob subside slightly._

_“I’m sorry too. I thought you’d moved on, that you didn’t care because you didn’t show it, but I guess – we all deal with this stuff differently, and I didn’t understand what you were doing as much as you didn’t understand what I was doing. But…what I was really mad about last night – what really upset me – was what you said about me seeing Liam.”_

_Zayn watches Louis the whole time he’s speaking, watching his jaw work stoically to stop the tears that are welled up in his eyes from spilling out. He sees Louis’s face harden for a second when he sees Liam’s name, and then he collapses completely._

_“God, I know,” Louis says, and before Zayn realises what he’s doing, he stands up and goes to the other side of the table to sit next to Louis, puts an arm around him and pulls him in to his side. At first Louis stiffens, as if some part of him is still resisting Zayn, but then Zayn draws his fingers through Louis’s hair, where it’s getting long and feathery on top, and Louis goes limp against him._

_“I’m sorry I’m so shit,” Louis says miserably, and Zayn closes his eyes, feeling the lump in his throat dissolve as he lets himself cry, and hold his friend, and think about Liam._

_After about five minutes he feels Harry’s arms wrap around him, so that Louis is between the two of them, and Zayn opens his eyes to look at him._

_“It went quiet, I thought maybe one of you murdered the other,” Harry says softly, from where he’s resting his cheek on top of Louis’s head. Zayn laughs wetly, and hears Louis do the same from where he’s curled up against Zayn’s chest._

_“Not quite,” Zayn says. “I think this was a long time coming.”_

_“Six months, in fact,” Harry says, and Zayn nods. He does feel lighter, somehow, like Louis’s pent up grief hasn’t just been weighing on his own shoulders, but on Zayn’s as well._

_There’s one more thing he needs to do, though, so after he’s held Louis for a little while longer, and convinced Harry that he’s fine, he promises to come back round tomorrow night for the last night of the summer holidays. Then he gets in his car and drives._

_It’s the same route they’d been driving that night, but it somehow feels so different in the bright sunshine and light traffic of Saturday morning. He tenses up slightly when he’s approaching the intersection where the crash happened, but the light stays green and he drives through it with no occurrence. It almost feels wrong, to come through the other side of the traffic lights unscathed, with no major incident, when it was the place Liam took his last breath._

_That thought alone makes Zayn want to spin the wheel until he ends up in oncoming traffic or one of the corner shops that line the street, but then he thinks of Harry and Louis huddled quietly together in their dining room; of Niall crying softly to himself at night when he thinks nobody can hear him; of his mum, who still calls once a week to ‘catch up’, which Zayn knows is code for checking up on him (and he knows she talks to Louis more than she does Zayn, and probably gets more information out of him too)._

_He thinks of Liam, both versions of him. The Liam Zayn knew and loved and laid next to at night for four years, and the Liam he’s seen on and off for the last few months. He thinks about warm hands and eyes that glow like embers, and he keeps his hands steady on the wheel. He keeps his foot pressed gently to the accelerator, and he brakes for the red light ahead._

_Maybe he’s too weak to give himself an easy out, or maybe he just thinks that he and his friends have been through enough. In that moment, the decision he makes, whether conscious or not, to keep driving straight, feels like the first moment of his life._

_He sees the mother and daughter driving in the car ahead of him, laughing and singing along to something on the radio. He sees a man walking his dog, and he thinks of Rhino and Loki at home, waiting for him at the end of every day, knowing nothing else of the world but his apartment and the few surrounding streets, never asking for more than a friendly pat and regular meals and walks from Zayn. He sees people in the cars driving towards him, and in the shops that line the street._

_He waits for the man and his dog to cross the street in front of him, and drives off after the light has turned green, marvelling how easy it is to keep living even when death seems to lurk around every corner._

_//_

_Zayn’s barely noticed where he’s been driving when he pulls up to Ruth’s house, his heart beating in his chest like the wings of a frightened bird. He sits in the driveway for a few minutes feeling stupid, and then feels even more stupid when he sees the daffodils growing in Ruth’s front garden and he starts crying._

_When he’s pulled himself together and dragged himself out of the car, he doesn’t give himself time to think before he knocks on the door._

_Ruth looks surprised, for a fraction of a second, to see Zayn standing there, and then she pulls him into a tight hug and Zayn has to fight back tears all over again. When she finally lets go and invites him inside, Zayn manages to apologise sincerely for the way he’d acted the night before, and since the accident._

_It’s a lot easier than he’d thought it would be to mean what he says, after hearing Ruth talk about how much she blamed herself for Liam’s death, how much she misses her little brother and how she wishes she and Zayn had been able to reconcile sooner. Zayn agrees, partially – he’s not sure that he and Ruth will ever be friends, after everything, but he’s relieved, for both their sakes and for Liam’s, that there’s no hard feelings between them. Zayn declines tea from Ruth, saying he has other people to visit, and Ruth just nods and smiles, like she knows._

_It reminds Zayn of Liam, the way he knew what kind of day Zayn had had, the kind of mood he was in, just from the way he shut the door behind him when he came home at the end of the day._

_Zayn sees so much of Liam in Ruth that he has to sit in his car and stare at the steering wheel for ten minutes before he can drive away. He feels paralysed just from being in Ruth’s presence and being reminded so much of Liam – her eyes, the way her whole face creases up when she smiles, and her warm, homely accent. It reminds him that the visions of Liam he sees aren’t the only traces of him left – his family are still here, and they miss him too._

_After he leaves Ruth’s, Zayn drives to Liam’s parents’ house to make another apology. It seems a lot easier, after Louis and Ruth, and Liam’s parents are, predictably, tearful and grateful to Zayn for coming. He should have gone sooner, he knows, should have been there to help them grieve, and for them to help him in return, but he hasn’t known what to say. He still doesn’t, standing in the Payne’s living room holding a cup of tea and looking around at all the photos of Liam that are left on the wall, the mantelpiece, the coffee table._

_But Karen does most of the talking, asking Zayn how he’s been, how his mother and sisters are, and what he’s been doing over the summer. Zayn lies and tells her he’s been keeping busy brushing up on his cooking skills, and she gives him a big grin and a kiss on the cheek. Zayn tells her and Geoff yes, of course he’ll come back and visit soon, and a part of him means it._

_Then he gets in his car and drives home, and he doesn’t run a single red light along the way._

_//_

__"If there’s no one beside you when your soul embarks_  
Then I’ll follow you into the dark." _  
Death Cab for Cutie, ‘I Will Follow You Into the Dark’ 

__August 31st 2022_ _

_Sometimes when he wakes up in the morning, there’s a split second where Zayn forgets. He forgets plenty of times throughout the day, too, turning to point out a poster for a movie, or when Liam’s favourite shampoo is on special at the supermarket, and remembering, milliseconds too late, that there’s no one to point these things out to anymore._

_But it’s different in the morning. Zayn’s brain is slower, still emerging from the foggy layer of sleep that’s clouded him in the night, and it takes him just that much longer to remember. When he rolls over, expecting to feel Liam’s chest or back, to be able to nuzzle under his arm and hear Liam grumble softly in his sleep, or to slip into the warm dip in the bed that Liam left when he got up early to take the dogs for a run._

_He can see Liam so vividly in his mind when his eyes are still closed, solid and warm and golden against the sheets, that when he opens them and sees an empty mattress, it’s so disconcerting that Zayn sometimes thinks he’s still dreaming._

_But then he remembers, and it’s like the earth wobbles on its axis for a second. Nothing major, no tidal waves or earthquakes, just the slightest lurch of disruption in Zayn’s stomach when he has to remind himself that he lost Liam, he lost the person he thought he was going to spend the rest of his life with, and no amount of after-death communication or soulmate theory is going to bring him back._

_The morning after he’s visited Louis and Ruth and Liam’s parents is one of those mornings when he can picture Liam lying next to him, drooling slightly, his arm propped up for Zayn to lean against when he rolls over. It makes him want to keep his eyes closed, permanently, just to be able to see Liam there and pretend that it’s real._

_It’s Sunday – he could spend all day like this, eyes closed against the reality of his empty bed, pretending that Liam is still breathing. But something makes him open his eyes, and for a second he thinks this is Inception, he’s woken up from a dream inside a dream, because Liam is lying next to him. Then he realises it’s his vision of Liam, the one that still wears the same clothes he was wearing the night he died, who visits Zayn from whatever afterlife there is, for an hour or so, and then disappears again._

_Liam smiles softly at him when he sees Zayn’s awake, and rolls towards him, propping his head up on his elbow._

_“Morning sleepyhead,” he says, and Zayn would let someone pluck out all of his ribs one by one to be able to hear Liam say that to him, every morning, for the rest of his life. Just those two words._

_“Morning,” Zayn says, yawning and pushing his hair out of his face. “How long have you been here?”_

_Liam closes his eyes briefly; he looks tired, Zayn thinks, if it’s possible for someone who’s dead to be tired. He wants to tell Liam everything that happened yesterday and the night before, with Louis and Ruth and his parents, wants Liam to be proud of him for actually showing up and apologising. For trying to be a better person._

_Then Liam says, “We can’t keep doing this forever,” and the words die in Zayn’s throat._

_He’d thought they had time. But who was he kidding – did he really think he was going to be able to just keep seeing Liam forever, for Liam to keep crossing over, or whatever this was, until it was Zayn’s time to join him? He knew there was a deadline to this, he just wasn’t ready._

_He isn’t ready._

_“It’s getting harder and harder to come back,” Liam says, and Zayn knows now why he looks so tired. It’s an effort for him, to keep coming back to see Zayn. It’s draining him; when Zayn looks closely, he can almost see the sheets through Liam’s chest. It makes him want to throw up._

_“I know,” Zayn whispers, but he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to be okay with this. With losing Liam again._

_“It’s gonna be ok, Zee. I’ll still be able to see everything you do. You know I can see you, right?”_

_Zayn can’t look at Liam. The more he looks, the more he’s reminded that this isn’t Liam at all. It’s a ghost, a memory, an imperfect trace of the real Liam._

_“I saw what happened at Louis’s on Friday night. I saw you go to my sister’s, and my mum and dad’s. You were amazing, Zayn.”_

_Zayn sees teardrops falling onto the sheets, but he can’t feel himself crying. He can’t feel anything._

_“We haven’t had enough time,” Zayn says, the only thing he can think of to say. His own voice sounds desperate in his ears._

_“There’ll never be enough time, Z,” Liam says. Zayn forces himself to meet Liam’s eyes, and tries to remember them the way they look now, catching the morning sun that’s coming in through the window behind Zayn and glinting red and gold._

_“I could spend a thousand lifetimes with you and it wouldn’t be enough,” Liam says._

_Zayn shakes his head. He can see the pillow through Liam’s head, and it makes him want to throw something, tear the world in half, makes him want to grab onto Liam’s translucent wrist and pull himself through to the other side with Liam._

_“Let me go with you,” Zayn pleads._

_“No Zayn,” Liam says, his voice dark. “It’s not time. You have to promise me, ok? You have to promise me you’ll stay. Niall needs you, Harry and Louis need you, your students need you. Your family needs you.”_

_“I need _you_ ,” Zayn says, and he knows he sounds pathetic but it’s all he has. _

_“You’ll still have me,” Liam says. “I’ll always be around, you just won’t be able to see me. I’ll be waiting, Zayn. You’ll see me when it’s time.”_

_Zayn can’t breathe for sobbing, he draws in a long, gasping breath and tastes tears hot and salty on his tongue. He feels his nails digging into his palm and grits his teeth, trying to keep Liam here with sheer force of will._

_“I love you Zayn,” Liam says with a small smile, and Zayn doesn’t think he’s ever been in this much pain in his life. This is worse than the crash, worse than the funeral; losing Liam again, for good, hurts more than anything Zayn could have imagined possible. It’s physical, tearing through his chest and up his throat and out of his mouth in wretched, painful sobs._

_“Say it back to me,” Liam pleads, and Zayn can see he’s growing fainter by the minute, almost faint with holding on._

_“I love you,” Zayn chokes out, and hearing it from his own mouth makes him more determined. “I love you Liam, so much,” he says, clearer this time, and Liam smiles at him, his brilliant, blinding smile that creases up his whole face and lights up rooms and rooms, and then he’s gone._

_Zayn could have imagined him. He could have hallucinated the whole thing. But what’s the use in thinking that? He had months, months with Liam after he died. It’s more than most people get, he knows, but it still leaves a gaping hole in his chest the size of a man he loved for four years, and who he’ll miss for the rest of his life._

_He should call Harry. Harry will understand what it means, for Liam to be gone for good this time, and he’ll know what to say and he’ll hold Zayn until he stops crying. But he feels like his limbs are dead weights, like he’ll never get up off the mattress again, like he’s lost the power of speech._

_He lets himself crumple onto the pillow, fists his hands in the sheets, and cries._

_//_

__"I will take the sun in my mouth__  
and leap into the ripe air  
Alive  
with closed eyes  
to dash against darkness"  
E.E Cummings, ‘I Will Wade Out’ 

_Time has never moved smoothly, for Zayn, and it is especially fickle in the months, then years, after Liam’s death._

_At first, Zayn feels like time is suspended, like he’s floating in a vast, endless stretch of the same moment playing over and over again. It’s like he can’t move on and he can’t go back, he can only sit and watch the moment of impact that night in the car on repeat._

_Then time had slowed down, and the six months after the accident had seemed like a lifetime to Zayn. Every day waiting to see whether Liam would appear again was torture, a week’s worth of anticipation spanning only a day; and the same the next day, and the next._

_The hours that Liam was there, though, always seemed to slip through Zayn’s fingers like water. He would always think they had all the time in the world, that Liam had only been there five minutes, that Zayn could afford to close his eyes for a moment when they were lying side by side on the bed. Then he’d open them and Liam would be gone, and Zayn would realise they spent two whole hours talking without realising how late it had gotten._

_Zayn keeps marking time as he always did when Liam was alive, in the form of birthdays, anniversaries and Christmases. But instead of spending them with Liam, he spends them with friends, with his family, or with himself. His first Christmas without Liam, he drives up to Bradford to see him mum and dad, trying not to glance over at the passenger seat where Liam used to sit, with the windows down, the sun hitting the side of his face like he was a marble statue, like he was untouchable._

_Zayn’s surprised to find that Bradford doesn’t really feel like home anymore – he’s thought of London, his small apartment he shared with Liam and Loki and Rhino as home for the last five years now. Still, it’s good to see everyone, to tease Waliyha about her new boyfriend, and see how much Safaa’s grown. It’s nice to be fussed over, too, especially by his mum. She asks him if he’s eating enough, how his friends are, and then, out of the blue, she asks if he’s seeing anyone._

_She’s not the first person to ask him - lots of people have suggested that Zayn start dating again, supposedly to help with the healing process. His friends, other teachers at school, his therapist, have all encouraged him, but Zayn doesn’t see why he should. He tries the idea of it on, like a new sweater, imagines getting coffee with the maths teacher who’s had a crush on Zayn for years, or some distant friend of the family his mum wants to set him up with, but he’d either be too busy comparing them to the image of Liam he’s kept alive in his mind, the Liam without all of his flaws; or he’s terrified Liam would be watching, from wherever he is, like he said he would be. It makes Zayn sick to his stomach to think of Liam looking on while Zayn’s curled up on the couch with his arm around a stranger, or worse, in bed with someone else. Besides, it’s not like Zayn is trying to move on from a breakup, a relationship that didn’t work out._

_He and Liam were supposed to grow old together._

_Zayn had felt it from the first day he met Liam. Staring at his face, he thought it would be the face he was looking at when he was forty, when he was seventy. He can’t imagine feeling that way about anyone else; it doesn’t feel right, so he tells people he’s ok on his own. And in many ways, he is._

_He learns to love in other ways – he falls in love with his job all over again and with teaching his kids. He falls in love with his friends and all the ways they’ve been there for him since Liam died. He falls in love with the quiet of his empty apartment and with coming home to two wagging tails and pink tongues every day. And he falls a little bit in love with the dull ache of loneliness that’s made a home in his chest since losing Liam. He lets himself wallow in it, so now it feels worn in and familiar. He falls in love with the slight emptiness when he rolls over in the middle of the night to a cold pillow where Liam’s head used to be; when he wants to go see the new Marvel film but no one will go with him, complaining that he’s too old for superhero movies (he and Liam had promised each other they’d still and go and see the tenth remake of Spiderman when they were eighty). Instead, he buys a twin-size bed and falls in love with going to movies alone._

_//_

_Zayn watches the seasons change and feels himself getting older, watches Niall fall in love with one of the clients he designs a house for, and stands proudly in the church when Harry and Louis get married. He feels himself getting further and further away from the person he was when he was with Liam, which sometimes feels like relief, like he doesn’t have to carry that weight of Liam’s death anymore. Sometimes, though, it terrifies him, that one day the person he was when Liam was alive and they were happy together will no longer exist, and all he will have of their life together is memories. That all he’ll have of Liam is his memories and a crumpled photo in his wallet, a remnant of another time, another world._

_It strikes him at the strangest moments – when Niall’s fiancée Amelia gives birth to their first daughter, when Zayn’s granted a year’s sabbatical leave from work to travel and work on his own poetry, when Harry and Louis celebrate their ten year wedding anniversary. Suddenly, in moments when he’s so happy he feels untouchable, he thinks of Liam and all the plans they made together._

_His mind and his body and his memories get softer, the sharpness around Liam’s silhouette getting blurrier as he has to lose old memories to make room for new ones. He thinks of Liam watching him, like he said he would be, seeing Niall and Amelia’s kids grow up, seeing Zayn finally find a publisher for his collection of poems he wrote while he was in France for a year._

_All of them about Liam._

_It feels easier to let go, after that. Now that Liam’s memory is preserved in ink and paper, now that Zayn’s given a physical shape to his presence, that he’s finally found words that go beyond the cliché of “a grief so large it could swallow you whole,” it feels easier to forget some things about his and Liam’s life together._

_Of course, there are some things Zayn can never forget. The way Liam’s voice sounded in the morning, his favourite kind of ice cream (mint chocolate chip), the veins on the back of his hands. Zayn turns them over in his mind like touchstones, reassuring himself that Liam, his Liam, will never really be gone._

_//_

__"I would know him in death, at the end of the world."_  
Madeline Miller, ‘The Song of Achilles’_

__October 3rd 2078_ _

_Zayn dies on a Wednesday._

_His sisters are there, and Harry and Louis, Niall already gone two years earlier. Zayn feels nothing, only a slowly creeping sense of relief as he lets go of the world around him. As the lights of the room and the faces of his friends and family fade and everything goes dark, he hears a familiar voice, one he hasn’t heard since he was a young man, full of life and expectations, his heart bursting at the seams with love._

_He would know that voice anywhere._

_Zayn turns, and sees Liam standing in front of him. It’s his Liam, the Liam he remembers, who could fix a leaking tap in five seconds flat but had never read Macbeth before he met Zayn. Strong, reliable, beautiful Liam, standing in front of Zayn with a smile that cuts through the darkness around them – radiant, even in death, Zayn thinks._

_“Liam,” Zayn says, feeling as young as he did when they first met, when they went on obstacle courses and chased each other round their apartment with imitation lightsabers and had plans to travel the world._

_“Hi, babe,” Liam says, his voice warm like a soothing cup of tea, like all of Zayn’s favourite songs rolled into one._

_“You waited for me.”_

_“Told you I would,” Liam says, taking a step towards Zayn. His hand comes up to Zayn’s cheek, and for a second Zayn’s heart drops, because he remembers Liam can’t touch him._

_But he does. He cups Zayn’s cheek with his calloused, warm palms, and Zayn feels everything that’s been missing ever since Liam died fall into place. This is where he’s meant to be, Zayn thinks, here with Liam. Somewhere between the world they shared together, all too briefly, and the next, and the next, and the next._

_Zayn leans in towards Liam, letting their noses brush briefly, before touching their lips together. It feels like the first time, like the last kiss on earth, it feels like waking up and dying all at the same time._

_Zayn doesn’t care how much time passes, he’s not even sure if it’s passing at all. The only thing he cares about is that Liam is here, that he can feel Liam’s hand on the back of his neck and he can touch Liam’s chest, he can taste the burnt-caramel sweetness of Liam’s mouth and he feels, for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, alive._

__The End_ _

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you liked it, let me know in the comments or leave kudos, and come visit me on tumblr @grown-mp3 xx


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